[mythtv-users] MythGallery Display MP4s?

Jeff Wormsley daworm at comcast.net
Sun Jan 17 16:07:55 UTC 2010


Eric Sharkey wrote:
> I'ts been my general experience that software which works based on
> what a file actually is often works better than software which uses
> extensions to guess file types.
>
> Filename extensions are a legacy concept and deserve to die a horrible
> flaming death in the annals of computer history.
>   
This may be true once you have opened a file, but how do you decide if 
you want to open it in the first place?  The directory entries in the 
file system doesn't tell you what the file contents are directly.  The 
extension was intended for that purpose, so that you wouldn't have to 
open every single file on your drive(s) and read a part of each of them 
to find what you want, because that is terribly inefficient (i.e. 
slow).  The problem isn't the extension, it is the applications and OS's 
that allow you to save a file of one type with the extension of 
another.  And that isn't likely to change, because who knows what types 
of files (and their associated extensions) are going to come out tomorrow? 

Jeff.


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