Re: [vox] Open Office vs MS

[Jeff Newmiller <jdnewmil@dcn.MAPSdavis.ca.us>]

On Mon, 9 Sep 2002, nbs wrote:

> Long-winded PS - One of my favorite features of The Gimp is its ability to
> detect what file format you want to save as when you type the filename.
> 
> In XV, for example, you need to specifically choose GIF, PNG, JPG, etc. from
> a pull-down (and it alters the filename in the type-in field, if possible).
> This means you can inadvertently save a GIF file as "something.png"
> because you forgot to change the pulldown.
> 
> In The Gimp, if you leave the 'file type' pulldown to 'automatic', it'll
> know to save as PNG when you say "filename.png" :)
> 
> I think all apps. that deal with multiple formats should be this smart. :)

There is always a downside to these "automatic" features.  The most direct
counter to your suggestion is the "overloading" of filename extensions.  
WordStar, WordPerfect, and MS Word all used .DOC extensions, so any word
processor hoping to export to those types would be unable to decide based
on the extension you typed.

In the paragon-of-stupidity department: One of the more irritating
behaviors of the "NOTEPAD.EXE" program that comes with every version of MS
Windows is that if the last character is not a period, it will save the
file as whatever you entered ("myfile.xml") with ".txt" appended to the
name ("myfile.xml.txt").  If you want a different extension, you have to
suppress the stupidity by appending a period ("myfile.xml.").

I kind of like the idea that file extensions could be mapped to MIME types
to suit your preferences, but in the long run, the file type pulldown is
your only sure bet when you have alternative output types.

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