Re: new mime detection approach

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Wed, 2004-01-14 at 18:14, Xavier Bestel wrote:
> Le mer 14/01/2004 à 17:57, Alexander Larsson a écrit :
> 
> > I'm sure some people will dislike this behaviour
> 
> I'm sure too. And it does nothing for the many filetypes which can be
> thumbnailed - and there will be more and more of them.

What do you mean by that? 

> I think you both gave it lots of thoughts, so why didn't you go with a
> proper metadata system, correctly filled by compliant apps when they
> save their files, and re-sniffed only when necessary ?

How would such a metadata system work? If it uses a file per file, or
EAs then it would instantly be as slow as sniffing. If it used a
metadata system with e.g. one file per directory it could be fast, but
that adds a *lot* of complexity with locking and consistancy handling,
file permissions, and possible out-of-process communication. There has
been thoughs about a common metadata system, but they are far from near
implementation, and there are many issues to solve.

Additionally a metadata-based system would mean any non-nautilus
operation on the file could make it drop the metadata, leave metadata
around forever, or make the metadata stale. It would also have problems
with read-only media and probably other complications.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl redhat com    alla lysator liu se 
He's a bookish soccer-playing werewolf gone bad. She's a strong-willed snooty 
safe cracker descended from a line of powerful witches. They fight crime!