Nautilus and .dat file type

[Norman Gaywood]

On Wed, Feb 18, 2004 at 02:49:36PM +0000, David L Norris wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-02-18 at 14:12, Alexandre Strube wrote:
> > Em Qua, 2004-02-18 ??s 03:32, Norman Gaywood escreveu:
> > > Surely, nautilus should do more that use a file extension to determine
> > > file type?
> > 
> > It seems that nautilus relies on the output of "file" program to
> > determine what is the file type, not the extension.
> 
> It is not specific to Nautilus.  Both file name and file contents are
> used by gnome-vfs to determine the file type.  gnome-vfs uses a separate
> database from the file command.

Yes, that is correct. nautilus does not use the file command. The file
command correctly recognizes the .dat files for what they are.

>                           The file name should override the
> content-based detection.

It should? Sounds like a mistake to me. File type based on a 
three character extension. Sounds like the "good-old-days". The file
name is for humans. Computers can look at the content.

So now because nautilus has hijacked .dat for MPEG, everyone who has
been using .dat to mean data files, since probably the 1960's, has to
rename their files.

> Preferences -> File types and programs

No. I've been there. I removed the .dat association under Video-MPEG
video. But there seems to be something deeper. nautilus still calls my
.dat files MPEG videos.

Even if that did work, how do I do this for ALL users of my system?

BTW, konqueror has no trouble with this. Classes start here is 2 weeks.
If I can't solve this, several hundred students get to use KDE before
gnome.

-- 
Norman Gaywood, Systems Administrator
School of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science
University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia

norm at turing.une.edu.au            Phone: +61 (0)2 6773 2412
http://turing.une.edu.au/~norm    Fax:   +61 (0)2 6773 3312

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