Re: new mime detection approach

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Wed, 2004-01-14 at 19:16, Xavier Bestel wrote:
> Le mer 14/01/2004 à 18:54, Alexander Larsson a écrit :
> > 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? 
> 
> To thumbnail a file, you have to call the right thumbnailer. Will you
> then only rely on the regexp to call it ?

Or the sniffer if it doesn't match any regexp. This won't thumbnail your
.gnumeric files that are actually .mpg until you select them (but then
they'd be thumbnailed the next time you read the directory and forever
on). I hardly think that this is a problem worth 40x slower directory
reads. 

> > > 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.
> 
> Yes, I was thinking about this kind of metadata. Do you mean that the
> regexp solution is a kind of stop-gap measure, and that nautilus would
> adopt the common metadata system once it's working ?

Probably not.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl redhat com    alla lysator liu se 
He's a short-sighted Catholic master criminal with nothing left to lose. She's 
a psychotic communist widow who hides her beauty behind a pair of thick-framed 
spectacles. They fight crime!