Re: Moving away from app-centric mimetypes (e.g. kword)

> Hello!
> 
> Please help me out with an idea that came in my mind a few weeks ago.
> 
> I browsed a directory where there were a dozen files all in the format
> of a well known/disliked word processor. They all were presented as of
> the same mime type. But this didn't represent their real state being:
> - letters
> - papers
> - brain drops
> etc.
> 
> But I couldn't always guess it from the files' names what kind of
> document they were. So it flashed through my brain:
> 


It's been done. OS/2 does it with extended attributes. It's how OS/2 does long filenames on FAT, you can edit a file's properties and change the idcon associated with it, edit a folder and change its background without effecting other folders, you can edit the menu associated with any object and add items to it. For example, I could  the menu for a file called "Bills Rasberry" to invoke sendmail; every time I choose that menu item it would mail it off to Bill.

If I create a document using IBM Works and store it as "letter to Bill" then that's its name. It does not need or have any suffix to identify it as an IBM Works document.

A standard menu item on objects descended from "WPDatafile" is "Print." If the object is an IBM Works document, then choosing "Print" opens IBM Works to print it (so does dropping it on a printer).

Move the disk to another computer, all that information goes with it.
-- 
Cheers
John Summerfield

Microsoft's most solid OS: http://www.geocities.com/rcwoolley/

Note: mail delivered to me is deemed to be intended for me, for my disposition.

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