Re: Suggestion for file type detection approach

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org>]

<quote who="Donald Henson">

> Earlier, someone mentioned a file that was mis-identified as an HTML
> file. Someone else suggested that you should just add emacs or vi to the
> file association list and press on. Well, I'm here to tell you that most
> ordinary users, people like me who just want to get some work done, have
> never even heard of emacs or vi and, even if they've heard of it don't
> have a clue as to how to use it.

Not relevant. The person could have said "gedit or bluefish" - the intent
was that you could always open it in an HTML editor of your choice, not
specifically vi or emacs.

> They *might* know how to set up a file association but probably not.

And that is the real problem; currently, this is not a simple or straight
forward concept or operation at all. That's a known problem, and I know that
it is being looked into (Jonathan Blandford is working on the mime standard
stuff so that we can do it properly).

> What might seem like the ultimate simple answer to someone who has worked
> with Unix for 25 years may seem like the ulimate black magic to a newbie
> user.

The ultimate simple answer was: "open it in something else", and there are
50 ways of doing that, *including* opening your html editor and dragging the
file to it, or using File > Open... The answer was not specifically about vi
or emacs.

> I don't know if there are any developers on this list but, if you're here,
> please keep the newbie user in mind when making design decisions.  Just my
> $0.02.

This is largely a developer's list, and there's no evidence to suggest that
design decisions are being made without users in mind (beyond the historical
file association / mime handling stuff).

- Jeff

-- 
linux.conf.au 2004: Adelaide, Australia         http://lca2004.linux.org.au/
 
          Perl: Making thick Windows admins redundant since 1987.