"Clive George" wrote in message
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"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
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In article ,
dennis@home wrote:
Same as RISC OS. Each time I use my windose box - as I have to for
some things - the operating system frustrates. One that really does
annoy is clicking on a file you want to view and up comes the choice
of which prog you want to use. Except that many won't even load that
type of file...

So you tell it and then it remembers. How does RISC OS know how to open
a .doc file or any other file that has a new extension or type?

It loads it into a suitable app. A text file for example will be claimed
by your favourite editor if you've set things for that to happen.

And it knows how to do this by having an file type code as part of the
file, rather than using a file extension. I like that.

And if I create a text file on my Linux machine and call it bill and give it
you on a USB stick its going to know its text how?
You can put mime types and encodings in windows files IIRC and it will
handle them correctly.. however most still use extensions as its easy.


Any OS can only open the application if something has told it which
application to use.. this is usually the application but they don't all
associate with file types when you install them, if so the OS has no
choice but to either ask or just assume you are stupid and ignore you.
Windows asks, what does RISC OS do?

In this case a straightforward text file. So I'd have expected Notepad to
claim it.

So what would RISC OS do with my text file bill above?
Does RISC OS guess at it by having a quick nose around to see if it looks
like text?
Sounds like it would be fun to create some odd file types and see what
happens.


Windows/unix have no real concept of file type, unlike RISC OS where it
was designed in from the beginning (dunno about mac). Windows works by
file extensions, hence bits like "hide file extensions" where it
encourages people to not know about them.

Personally I use a command shell to do things like opening files in a text
editor.

I usually right click and select edit.. somewhat safer than double clicking.