Re: [Gnumed-devel] force-opening a gif (or other files) on Mac

[Karsten Hilbert]

On Tue, Jan 01, 2008 at 08:02:16AM -0800, James Busser wrote:

>> I slightly modified the GNUmed code to map mime type to
>> extension via its own file on *all* systems if it seems
>> necessary.
>
> Is it possible that without the above modification, GNUmed would have 
> ignored such a file (under Mac OS) even if it existed?

Yes, unfortunately so, because MacOSX identified itself as
conforming to the POSIX specs but not actually doing so.

> By the way, I am guessing that the syntax permits only one filetype 
> (extension) be provided per MIME type
correct

> and so, when more than one are possible:
More than one may be *possible* but of what use may this be
in the problem space we are trying to solve ? It appears
quite sufficient to map mimetypes to *one* of possibly
several filename extensions which an appropriate viewer then
knows to handle, no ?

> 1) how would the multiple options be handled for example the following? 
> Arbitrary selection
>
> text/html = htm,html

This would result in the file being renamed to

        some-file.htm,html

before handing it to, say, Safari.

> 2) must the file subtype (e.g. the form of a word-processed document or a 
> spreadsheet) be identified and saved with the object at the time of 
> archiving,
No. Archived file-external type information can be missing
or faulty. Hence one may need to retrieve/verify type
information at display time *anyway*. Another point is that
type information generated at archival time may not be what
the target system at display time can work with.

Any decent self-respecting file format is identifiable post-hoc.

> and then passed along at the time of trying to view the 
> document? Probably the suppliers of the documents should be sending an 
> interchangeable format like Rich Text Format instead of a 
> poorly-interchangeable format... I doubt users will be reliably able to do 
> their own conversions before storing such things.
Likely so but I don't think its our job to create
World Peace. It'll do to supply ammo ;-)

Karsten
-- 
GPG key ID E4071346 @ wwwkeys.pgp.net
E167 67FD A291 2BEA 73BD  4537 78B9 A9F9 E407 1346