Re: GNOME needs 'Datatypes lib' (Was: About metadata)

[sopwith redhat com (Elliot Lee)]

On Wed, 19 Aug 1998 10:46:06 -0700, jeske@home.chat.net <DavidJeske> wrote:
>This is yet another topic branch. 
>
>On Wed, Aug 19, 1998 at 12:50:25PM -0400, Christopher Curtis wrote:
>> On Wed, 19 Aug 1998, Ian Wells wrote:
>> You make valid arguments and have some good points, however:
>> 
>> > - if a file format has nowehere to put an 'attribute' such as a
>> > copyright message, a thumbnail, or whatever, it's not appropriate to
>> > put the attribute in the file.  Word 97 files allow thumbnails and
>> 
>> You realize that not only are you asking for GNOME to understand and be
>> able to interpret every single file format ever created,
>
>  [.. snip ..]
>
>You know, it is not a bad thing to have GNOME understand every file
>format, nor is it implausable. BeOS, like Amiga, has a flexible
>framework called "Datatypes", which has a set of intermediate formats,
>and a system for throwing a file in and having it automatigcally
>decode it into the "general" format with the appropriate plug-in
>converter. It works really well, and for the small problem space it
>serves (i.e. file formats, mostly things like images and sounds), it
>works incredibly well. People write their apps to be able to handle
>"generic images" and they can load and save in any supported format.

The gnome_file_convert routines (listed in libgnome/gnome-fileconvert.h) 
do exactly this, although they could use conversion to use gnome_config
instead of fopen() :-)

-- Elliot
Progress (n.): The process through which Usenet has evolved from smart
people in front of dumb terminals to dumb people in front of smart
terminals.  -- obs@burnout.demon.co.uk