Re: File selector talk writeup

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

On Sun, 2003-02-16 at 15:50, Jody Goldberg wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 16, 2003 at 11:16:43AM -0500, Ettore wrote:
> > On Sun, 2003-02-16 at 01:54, Jody Goldberg wrote:
> > > On Sat, Feb 15, 2003 at 12:28:17PM -0500, Ettore wrote:
> > > > Maybe there is a way to push the MIME type handling part of GNOME VFS
> > > > down the stack so GTK can depend on it?  Maybe it could go into GLib?
> > > 
> > > Pushing sniffing that far down has some nice elements, but will
> > > create tension with the different use cases.  For something like
> > > nautilus you can trade accuracy for speed, it absolutely must be
> > > able to churn through lots of files.  For document-centric apps the
> > > trade off is reversed.  The application needs to make the best
> > > possible guess about what type of file it needs to open.  It can do
> > > plenty of preprocessing for that single data blob.
> > 
> > I don't understand this objection; the file manager and the apps must
> > have absolutely the same view of what type a certain file is.  Also, the
> > consistency between the file selector and the file manager must be
> > total.  Or not?
> 
> Ideally yes they would be consistent.  However, there are several
> considerations that work to separate things.
> 

[... various examples....]

>     Text based formats : CSV, TSV.  Gnumeric needs to make
>     	intelligent guesses about this stuff, expecting the file
> 	browser to do it is probably too much.
> 
> None of this is impossible, or even terribly hard.  However, it does
> add complication to an already complicated interface.  Don't get me
> wrong, I'd love to see something like this done.  If we have the
> resources to take this on now thats great, I'll do what I can to
> help

It seems to me that the general requirements for the file selector
and the file manager are similar.... you don't want to have to
guess CSV vs. TSV for every file in the file selector list in
order to show the icon.

If the app wants to do more sophisticated handling, it can do it 
when filling in the preview widget or when the file is opened.

Regards,
                                          Owen