Re: Resource forks and such
david parsons (o.r.c@p.e.l.l.p.o.r.t.l.a.n.d.o.r.u.s)
9 Jul 1999 15:19:48 -0700
In article <linux.kernel.199907082146.RAA03078@speaker.kf8nh.apk.net>,
<allbery@kf8nh.apk.net> wrote:
>On 8 Jul, Jens-Uwe Mager wrote:
>+-----
>| On Tue, 6 Jul 1999 22:22:39 GMT, allbery@kf8nh.apk.net
>| <allbery@kf8nh.apk.net> wrote:
>| >On 6 Jul, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
>| >| I haven't seen anyone mention this yet, but on OS/2 these 'albods' (called
>| >| EAs) were not used for compound documents but they were used to store
>| >| non-critical 'metadata' about files. With OS/2 you could give a different
>| >
>| >That said, the problem with storing the metadata with the file is that
>| >on a multiuser OS different people may want different associations,
>| >different icons, etc.for the same file. So it has to be stored per
>| >user, not per file. Also, how do you assign icons to files which are
>|
>| I think not, the way document types work these should not be changed on a per
>| user basis. For example, if you would store a mime type with each document,
>| then a GIF image will get image/gif and as long as the file is not rewritten
>| to contain something else its meta data should definitely be the same.
>+--->8
>
>The example given (which I clipped; I should have left it) was an icon,
>which is indeed stored in an EA on OS/2. That's the sort of thing that
>has no business being stored with the file on Unix (including Linux).
Applications would like to have defaults; if the user doesn't specify
the icon of their dreams, you need to have SOMETHING to fall back on
unless you're fond on making the users find the invisible icon.
>NB: OS/2 will also get an icon for an executable file from a .ICO file
>with the same root-name in the same directory. That one would work
>fairly well on Linux.
So have the default icon be in {self}/ICO, so if the UI can't find
an icon anywhere else it will look there; this way you don't drop
the icon on the floor when you move or rename the application.
____
david parsons \bi/ also look at default desktops for window managers,
\/ default xsessions for xdm,...
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