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Old December 14th 17, 09:56 AM posted to comp.sys.mac.apps,alt.windows7.general,comp.sys.mac.system
J. P. Gilliver (John)[_4_]
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Default Can a Macintosh person tell us how to change the name of a file? (Now discussion of metadata)

In message , Tim Streater
writes:
In article , Wolf K
wrote:

On 2017-12-13 19:37, Your Name wrote:
On 2017-12-13 22:13:44 +0000, Tim Streater said:
In article , nospam
wrote:

[...]
The type of a file and which app you'd like it to open with are items
of file metadata and have no business being part of the filename.
It is useful and sensible to have the file type as part of the
filename. Otherwise you'd get a pile of files which neither you nor
the OS having any idea whether they are images, sounds, text, etc.
You would then have to try to open the file in every app you own
until you found one that could open it


Many files have such type-identifiers included. E.g., a JPG file
begins with JFIF, a WordPerfect file includes WPC in the first line,
an MS .doc includes "Microsoft Word Document" in plain text in the
header, and so on. Some image viewers will even tell you that the
extension doesn't match the file type, if that happens to be the case.


Then you've put the metadata inside the file, which is even worse. It
should be part of the file system.

On the contrary: I think metadata _should_ be inside the file. That way
it can't be separated, even if the file is moved (or even emailed).
Relying on it being part of the file system only works while you're
inside the same OS, unless you believe in forcing all OSs to have the
same standards for handling metadata.

MP3 and JPG files don't seem to come to any harm by having metadata
inside them.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

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