Filetype detection

[Raphael Bosshard <whistler fnord ch>]

Hello there!

Few days ago there was a thread about the file-type detection. Fabio 
mentioned that sniffing was much slower, but everyone agreed that 
content-sniffing was far more reliable. I think the difference lies in 
the concept; Suffixes were ment to be file-type metadata, whereas 
content-sniffing is actually file-type detection.

But since extendet attributes finaly made it into the kernel, why not 
use them to store filetype-information, once detected?

Of cource, this would only affect extendet-attributes aware file 
systems, but I guess it'd be worth the try. It would compensate the 
lacks of file-type sniffing and would be less affected by user errors 
than suffixes (Everyone can rename a file). I don't know about the other 
OSes, but at least Irix has support for extendet attributes.

Gnome-vfs would need new api. That's the problem. But applications using 
gnome-vfs could even create the filetype attribute by themself.

Just some silly thoughts after hours of boid-coding.

Happy new year from switzerland!

Raphael