[haiku-development] Re: MimeType aliases.
- From: "Stephan Assmus" <superstippi@xxxxxx>
- To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 14:28:55 +0100
Hi,
[Snipped the beginning since I think it was sound.]
> - preferences/FileTypes
>
> This would have to list all types but either show the aliases in a
> different color (or in italics or in any other way to differentiate them).
>
> When a main type is selected, show the usual interface but with the
> addition of control where you can mark it as an alias and point to a
> specific main type.
>
> When an alias type is selected, it also shows the standard interface
> plus the control to mark it as alias. This would of course already be
> marked and pointing to the main type associated with it. All information
> listed will be the one for the main type.
>
> If you have a main type and switches it to be an alias, the backend
> would replace the actual file in the backend database by the wanted link
> and reload the data to show the new status.
>
> If you have an alias type and switches it to be a main type, the backend
> would copy the pointed to main type and replace the link by this copy
> and reload the data to show the new status.
Here maybe it would be better if the aliases would be sub-items (as in the main
outline listview) of each main type. Indicating them in italic or dark gray
instead of black text as you say would be nice. Then it would also be easy to
add a menu item "Show all aliases" and that way one could expand all main types
with aliases in all currently open super types. If one clicks on a alias, the
main type would be selected and that would even make visually sense. Since
converting an alias into a main type is something I anticipate would be
seldomly needed, one could make it available via context menu only.
> - Find panel.
>
> As with these changes all the files in the system would converge to only
> the main MIME types we have 3 options in the Find panel:
>
> 1 - Do not change anything. The drawback is that when searching by type
> some files may not show up (audio/x-mpeg files would not show up on a
> search for audio/mpeg). Note that in this case the find panel would show
> all types, main and aliases and would only search for the mime type
> string selected. I think this is the worse option (althougn the easiest).
>
> 2 - Show only main types in the type selection and count on the fact
> that eventually all files will converge to only main types. This has the
> drawback that if a file has not switched from audio/x-mpeg to audio/mpeg
> yet it won't be found in a query by the main type.
>
> 3 - Show only main types but do the query by adding all the alias types
> to the query formula. This would guarantee that all identified files
> (even the one with alias types) would be picked up but would also make
> the query a bit slower.
Here, I would absolutely prefer option 3.
Best regards,
-Stephan
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