RE: Nautilus, metadata and extendet attributes

[Daniel Borgmann <spark mayl de>]

On Thu, 2004-01-29 at 12:40 +0100, Olaf Frączyk wrote:
> > The funny part is, that even Microsoft knows, that "file extensions" are a
> > bad solution. They try to hide them ("Do not show extensions of know file
> > types") and, by doing so, create some kind of a pseudo-attribute but without
> > any clear concept. Let`s not do the same mistake they did some twenty years
> > ago.
> The biggest mistake is to hide these extensions. If they are shown, then
> you see blabla.doc.pif if they are hidden you see blabla.doc. Nothing
> more to say.

If file extensions would be hidden consequently everywhere on the
system, then this would be less of a problem because the user wouldn't
even know the difference between "blabla" and "blabla.doc" in the first
place. Instead he'd identify the document by what the system tells him
about it. The only reason why just superficially hiding file extensions
is so problematic is, that users got accustomed to identify file types
by their extension. That's not really good IMO, try to ask your average
user what an "xcf" file is.

Daniel