Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1999 20:02:37 -0700 From: Wilfredo Sanchez <wsanchez@apple.com> To: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> Cc: Thomas David Rivers <rivers@dignus.com>, darrylo@sr.hp.com, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Adding desktop support (please don't) Message-ID: <199904290301.UAA62176@scv4.apple.com>
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| This entire discussion seems to have skipped over an important concept:
| is the icon an attribute of the executable, or an attribute of the
| file manager? This is a point that is often missed, especially by the
| microserfs in Redmond. I think the icons are more an attribute of the
| file manager, they are a virtual view of the file rather than an
| attribute of the file.
Um, no. This is how you end up with that stupid thing Windows 3
did with the PIF thingies or whatever they're called, where what you
see in the viewer really has nothing to do with what is on the disk.
You get all sorts of goofy problems that way.
The icon representation you get in the file viewer (and in other
tools, hopefully) is a property of the file and belongs bundled
(somehow) with the file. You can do the icon-by-file-extention
trick, but that doesn't get you very far, in particular with files
like executables, where you don't usually add an extention, unless
you want the same icon for all files and rename everything cp.exe,
etc. :-)
The icon represents the file, not the viewer's notion of the file.
The file manager knows nothing of some file I may drop in tomorrow.
How could that file's icon be a property of the file manager? It's
supposed to know ahead of time about all files and file types on the
disk? That's pretty tough to deliver.
-Fred
--
Wilfredo Sanchez, wsanchez@apple.com
Apple Computer, Inc., Core Operating Systems / BSD
1 Infinite Loop, 302-4K, Cupertino, CA 95014
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