Re: Re: Windows does not recognize file type

To: [email protected]
From: Michael Rudas <m_p_rudas-/[email protected]>
Date: Sun, 7 Sep 2008 20:29:27 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [gimpwin-users] Re: Windows does not recognize file type



--- Ed (Horsefly) wrote:

>> I downloaded Gimp Help but it has a .tar file and
>> Windows will not open it.

Except for a few files which MS-Windows recognizes
as executables or dynamic link libraries, this is
conceptually the wrong viewpoint.

Windows doesn't really "open" files; the contents of
most file types are opaque to MS-Windows.

Instead, Windows keeps a table of matchups between
file extension tags and installed application
programs to handle those tagged file types.

When you tell Windows to "open" a file, what it does
instead is hand a link/handle for the file to the
application program matched to that file type, and
that application program, which does understand the
file's contents, "opens" the file.

So, if Ed had installed 7-Zip, and assigned the .tar
file tag to be opened by 7-Zip, then that's what
would happen when a *.tar file was "opened"; 7-Zip
would open it, not MS-Windows.

Similarly if Ed had installed the MS-Windows port of
the Unix tar program, and assigned it the .tar file
type to handle, opening a *.tar file would invoke
the tar program. Arguably this is a better choice,
tar has a _lot_ of options. I doubt 7-Zip has
implemented them all.

ScienceMikey wrote:
> The utility "7-Zip" handles TAR files ...
> <http://www.7-Zip.org>

You apparently missed the larger issue that Ed
downloaded the wrong files, per tml. There is
an installer for the GIMP help files that will save
Ed all that effort, so Ed shouldn't have to be
messing with the tar files, which are both not the
documentation anyway, but the raw data from which
the documents are constructed, and also not files
intended for end user consumption.

xanthian.


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