From: Vincent L. <vi...@vi...> - 2001-07-09 08:55:49
|
In article <200...@on...>, Laurent MOUSSAULT <Lau...@on...> wrote: > I agree that not being able to drop a file on an application when we know > that it _should_ be possible can be really annoying! A simple way to solve > this problem would be to have a key combination to force the drop (e.g. > holding shift during the drop). Some key combinations could be used by applications. For instance, here under RISC OS, holding the Ctrl key while sending a file to Zap (the text editor) opens the file in text mode. However, Shift is already used at the OS level when double-clicking to make the difference between running a file and loading it. So, using Shift for what you say would be OK. > Now, I think that the situation you describe should not lead to a problem, > for two reasons: > - first, when a file extension is unknown, rox can determine the mime type > by using some "magic", just like the unix command 'file' do. This could be > either done automatically, or at the user request (well... BeOS (again) has > a feature like "Fix the mime type of this file" which does just that). At the user request is OK, but not automatically, as it could be dangerous. For instance, you double-click on a file, and if it is a script or a binary executable, bad things could happen (this is not a drop here, but some bad things could happen with drops too, and for consistency, double-click and drag'n-drop should behave in a similar way)... > - more important, unknown file extensions (shuch as ".dat") should be > dropable anywhere; the windows and mac way of handling unknown file is > flawed, imho, because they lead to the kind of situation you describe. Yes. Ditto with text files when a particular text file is required. For instance, under RISC OS, the SVG viewer only accepts filetype SVG, and this is annoying when downloading files with extension ".xml" (they do not have the filetype SVG). > The only real problem would then be when a file has a wrong extension (e.g. > a MP3 with a ".gif" extension :). The user still can use the "drop force" > key, and should fix the extension (or ask rox to fix it). The extension isn't necessarily wrong. For instance, on windoze, Perl and WinAmp share the same filetype ".pl", and really bad things happen because of this... One more thing: The drop force key should be optional, of course. -- Vincent Lefèvre <vi...@vi...> - Web: <http://www.vinc17.org/> - 100% validated HTML - Acorn Risc PC, Yellow Pig 17, Championnat International des Jeux Mathématiques et Logiques, TETRHEX, etc. Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / SPACES project at LORIA |