Mathias Bauer wrote:
Anthony Chilco wrote:
Mathias Bauer wrote:
Hi Joost,
Joost Andrae wrote:
Hi,
on 'real' operating systems file extensions aren't necessarily needed as
the operating system provides automatic file content detection by itself
(eg. /etc/magic). Inside OpenOffice.org in case of text files (eg.
ASCII) there's the only exception I know because if a text file uses the
file extension .csv then this file is opened in Calc and otherwise
Writer will care about text files. I can second your opinion that the
removal of an 'auto-extension' is not useful because files can be
overwritten by accident but in my opinion the user should have the
choice to create files without an extension.
Saving without extension is a bad idea for a platform independent
application where the still most used platform relies on them to detect
the file type. You will start getting problems when you want to use this
document on another system.
I can find a lot of features that may be useful for some users in some
cases. But I don't consider saving files without extensions as important
and OTOH the drawbacks are obvious.
As this isn't a development related topic I recommend to move the
discussion to [EMAIL PROTECTED] But as 2.4 deadline is
approaching we also must find a fast and simple solution (or live with
the current state until 3.0). And that's what we are currently looking
for anyway.
Ciao,
Mathias
Hi Mathias,
I wanted to throw in my two cents' worth before this disappears to the discuss
list. Since a period is a valid character for filenames and not simply an
extension delimiter, any solution must allow for filenames with periods. I would
recommend that OOo append the proper extension to all new files, based on the
module they have been created in and/or the file type chosen in the save
dialogue. This would apply to 'file / save as' as well as 'file / new'. Exceptions:
1) Files opened explicitly using drag and drop or 'file / open' should keep
their original file names.
2) New filenames (first save or save as) enclosed by double quotes should not be
modified.
3) In situations where the file type is unknown, open a 'what file type is
this?' dialogue.
I'm afraid that many proposed "slight" changes in the way how
auto-extensikon should be done are not possible as the feature
implementation is not under our control. The auto-extension feature is a
feature of the dialog. So it's a part of the OS and not of OOo. We can
either use it or switch it off. My idea of witching it on or off
depending on the used file type is a result of that considerations.
Adding quotes to file names to prevent adding an extension most probably
will confuse the dialog and nothing else. Your idea sounds great - if
the dialogs supported it I would immediately switch to that solution as
it is elegant and most probably also intuitive for the target audience
(more experienced users).
Please let me add a more general comment.
This is a typical developer discussion. Just because something is
possible it must be done. Just because a file could be named "foo.bar" I
must be able to do so. Just because a period is a valid character in
file names we must not assume that it always preceeds an extension. But
though I'm a developer too I think that sometimes it's necessary to see
things from a user's point of view.
Windows' idea of extensions as file type indicators is broken by design
and we can't fix that. We can't remove it but we have to live with it.
This forces us to circumvent the contradictory work flows this feature
creates.
My proposal is: when saving a file always add the extension of the
selected file type to the file name, except if that file name already
contains *this* extension. With a single exception: text (txt) files
should be treated differently.
My proposal for these files is to add the "txt" extension to a text
(txt) file name only in case the file does not contain a dot. This will
allow Joe to use the "csv" extension as wanted. If the file name
contains a period but no extension (as you described) - no problem! Just
add the extension explicitly. This is the same as today and so the user
problems I mentioned only persist for a single file type (txt) and only
if the file name contains a dot. I think this is a great achievement and
a huge improvement.
OK, with my proposal you can't name your ODF file "foo.bar" or
"myfilenamewithoutextension", you can do this only for text files. But
is that really something users need? Yes, I know, on Linux the type of a
file can be detected without an extension. But again: just because
something is possible ...
Ciao,
Mathias
I was mainly trying to address the problem of periods within a filename, not
necessarily a different extension, i.e. "New proposal v2.34.odf". I would expect
that ODF be appended to the filename if I entered "New proposal v2.34" in the
save as dialogue.
tc
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