Firefox - gedit is the best!

[Tim]

On Mon, 2013-10-28 at 22:55 +0100, Mateusz Marzantowicz wrote:
> I don't know it is a correct design in that case. FF doesn't check
> file content and only trusts that HTTP headers are set correctly. But
> it is FF and not Fedora issue anymore. 

And that is how they're supposed to work, and how it really should be
done, for reasons of sanity.  When you ignore headers, and just pass
data to browsers to "sort out what do with this yourself," things screw
up, right royally.

For one thing, it's why Windows is so vulnerable.  Nasty stuff bypasses
sensible handling, and is allowed to execute, because that's what
Windows does with binary program files (it executes them).

But ignoring Windows stupidity, the same situation applies for other
operating systems.  The *server* must tell you what sort of data you're
being handed.  There are any number of different types of files
(function-wise) that are the same file-type (construction-wise), so they
need correct identification by what's sending it, as it will be the only
thing that would correctly know what it is.

There's a plethora of files that are just plain text, but not all of
them should be opened by a text editor.  And there are a plethora of
files that are some sort of binary, many more different types than we're
going to be able to list, or even know about.  But you can't arbitrarily
have your web browser palm them off to the same application, because
it'll be the wrong one to use for an awful lot of them.

e.g. If you're one of those people who decide to let your PDF reader
have all the unidentified binary files, because you keep getting PDF
files that save instead of load, your PDF reader is also going to asked
to load other unidentified binary files, and are not PDF files.

Having said that, if you want the brain-dead Windows method of handling
unidentified data, set your default binary/octet-stream handler (that's
the generic identifier for "this is some kind of binary file that I
haven't a clue about"), to palm off those files to something like
"gnome-open," which does snoop into the file to try and identify it (or
whatever handler has replaced gnome-open in newer Gnome releases, or
other-than-gnome desktops).

It's a bit more successful at doing that than Windows.  But, yes, it
will get it wrong, too.  And sometimes you're going to have to abort
what it tries to do, then download and save the file, and sort it out by
hand.

-- 
[tim at localhost ~]$ uname -rsvp
Linux 3.9.10-100.fc17.x86_64 #1 SMP Sun Jul 14 01:31:27 UTC 2013 x86_64

All mail to my mailbox is automatically deleted, there is no point
trying to privately email me, I will only read messages posted to the
public lists.

George Orwell's '1984' was supposed to be a warning against tyranny, not
a set of instructions for supposedly democratic governments.