Re: File Extension Madness

> A heated, bloodey battle was fought on irc over how
> the 'save as' dialog
> deals with file extensions with many varied opinions
> on how to do it.
>
> Dom likes it as-is (right?), in that if you save a
> file as 'my.doc' yet
> select the type as '.abw', that the file should be
> saved as a .doc
> without bothering him. Everybody (seemingly) agreed
> that user
> preference is ultimately what counts, but that this
> could lead to some
> problems for Ms. Joanna Secretary or Rev. George
> Bloggs.

I actually stated that I didn't necessarily like what
AbiWord currently does ("Don't assume that what
AbiWord currently does matches my mental model of what
should happen."). Also, please don't assume that what
I say in a "heated discussion" necessarily matches my
beliefs. You'd be surprised at how many times I play
Devil's Advocate.

I'm also not convinced that user preference has
anything to do with correctness (or even acceptably
correct (or even remotely allowable) behavior) here.

I don't like it when a tool gets in my way. I may
consider a tool "getting in my way" if it appends an
extension when I didn't ask for it. I may consider it
"getting in my way" if it doesn't append an extension
even though I selected "DOC" from a file format list,
so that I have to type it manually.

As I see it, there are no right answers to this debate
- there are only degrees of wrongness.

If we are to make any progress on this, we need to
come up with a representative number of use cases and
use them to best serve our users. Right now, the best
solution isn't clear to me. May it be made more so.

Dom

                
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Received on Fri Aug 13 21:06:44 2004