Re: [Usability]File renaming/extensions

[David Lazaro <david lazaro eresmas net>]

> Please, please, no

> i agree... please NO!

<joke>
Uhm... Am I pointing to you with a gun, guys? I would like to see your
extensions taken away from your view not your money nor your lives... ;)
</joke>

Well, it is clear to me that you don't like the idea for yourselves :)
but I will reword my proposal:

   * Extension hiding should be the DEFAULT behaviour. *

Why? First, I can't see any problem with them being hiding away. I have
used other operating systems with this feature and haven't noticed any
major drawback. And what is more important, users seem to love it;
either Mac OS X 10.1 or Windows users I have heard a lot of positive
reactions from my (not computer engineer friends) when Windows 95
offered the feature for the first time or when Apple brought back this
with Mac OS X 10.1.

Second, well, it seems a very desirable end default behaviour and all of
you should be able to turn it off from Nautilus' preferences. Now,
that's easy, isn't it?

Also, from a technical standpoint, the .extension thing is getting passè
this days. Great minds are raising against this nonsense of having file
names glued to data formats. Why is data type so "special" to be slapped
next to the file name? Well, date and time stamps at least have they own
space in a warm and comfortable i-node. Why file types can't? Ok, this
is getting a bit satirical so I'll leave it to greater thinkers than
myself to explain.

* If you are interesting in current developments that may obsolete many
granted limitations of current filesystems go to http://www.namesys.com/
and read about their current work and "new visions".

* If you would like a very good (IMHO) rant about metadata handling and
filename-extension nonsense bring yourselves to
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/01q3/metadata/metadata-1.html. and read;
then think; then write again to this mailing list, because I think that
this a question worth discussing.

A user test would be helpful, too. Now, taking that every major player
(Apple and Microsoft, that is) has taken the same approach... I think it
will be very easy to get right a prediction of how the final result.

Cheers and sorry for not including this before, it wasn't (and isn't) my
intention to troll in this mailing list,

David