Re: forcing html rendering for files without extensions

> [...x-tar-gz...]
> So the idea was "recursively unpacking known extensions chains until
> no more unpacking is possible".

Fine, but should it be driven off the name or the contents?  I see
arguments both ways.

>> [...], then the log.c file is probably C source in the first case
>> and probably not in the second, despite the identical names.

>> The hard part, of course, is telling the difference mechanically;
>> that's why so many things use such heuristics.

> [I]n practice, i find it constructed really, because i would assume
> the latter example being in a very dedicated environment that would
> not be mixed up.

Probably.  But it's happened to me at least once (finding a .c file
which was actually third in a series and confusing it with C source).

> [B]ut on for example Windows people surely do not even *know* that
> this is possible, but take the file extension and program bundle for
> granted.

Some of them.  While they're rarer than among Unix types, I have met
Windows users who would know exactly what's going on there.

I really blame the tools.  Way too many Windows programs hide \.[^.]*
extensions, displaying only the part before that.  I've long ago lost
count of the number of spams aimed at me which have things like an
attachment which the content says is something innocuous like a PDF,
but is named .rar and, based on the contents, would be more honestly
named with a .exe...presumably depending on the target's MUA to hide
the extension, or maybe depending on the target to not notice.

> I would love to get this "extension-chain" notion into the wild.

It already is, to at least some extent.  I have seen, and use, .tar.bz2
and the like routinely.  A past version of my FTP server would
automatically handle them; for example, if there were a directory `src'
and you asked for src.tar.bz2, it would tar src up, bzip2 the result,
and send you that.  (I arguably should readd that code to the FTP
server I now use, but so few people use it I'm not sure there's any
point.)

/~\ The ASCII				  Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
 X  Against HTML		[email protected]
/ \ Email!	     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B