Re: what about /etc/magic? (was Call for file types for Nautilus)

[James Henstridge <james daa com au>]

On Tue, 27 Feb 2001, Liam Quin wrote:

> > The MIME magic code in GNOME is (and has always been) based on the same file
> > format as magic(5), but with MIME types rather than English text
> > descriptions. It might be nice to merge the two mechanisms some day.
> 
> Yes, and since you have access to the source for file(1), not difficult.

Well, the magic checking in the mime code in gnome-libs was based on a
version of file(1).  I assume the gnome-vfs version uses the same code.

> Natural language descriptions for MIME types would also be useful.

Given you may have a number of entries in the magic file that map to a
single mime type, putting the descriptions in the magic file would lead to
a bit of duplication -- better to put it in a file that uses the mime type
as a key, rather than magic data.

> For i18n purposes, maybe we should have magic.xml insted? :-)

if you are willing to convert the existing code to use libxml :)


James.

-- 
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