Subject: Re: Suggestion: ugly Hack or subtle hint?
From: Mike Nordell (tamlin@algonet.se)
Date: Thu Sep 13 2001 - 14:36:46 CDT
Alan asked:
>
> I would like to suggest that we change the Save As dialog so that the
> extension are marked as (.rtf, .doc).
I disagree.
> I believe that this would be a subtle way to suggest the well known
> workaround to users, without being dishonest about it.
Well known to ...? Well know to us AbiWord developers, but sure not well
known to users that never seen AbiWord. I sure think it would be dishonest
to save RTF in a file with a ".doc" extension.
> The default extension would of course still be .rtf and the users
> would actively have to change it to .doc
Then, if they _really_ wan't to be liars about something like this, let them
mature enough to change the file extensions themselves in the Explorer. On
the other hand we could also give them the opportunity to completely screw
things up by allowing them to save e.g. a zlib compressed AbiWord document
with the extension .txt. But then; Why?
> Is this an unacceptable and ugly hack or is as subtle and discreet as i
> think it is?
To the first question I'd answer "Yes" and to the second "No".
Saving RTF with a .doc extension would be a lie. You wouldn't expect your
compiler to start saving object files with an extension of .txt.
It would also be somewhat reluctant of saving a "safe" file-format using an
extension for something that is known to carry viral code. So far I've seen
no viral code in RTF. :-)
I also don't think this would be a "subtle hint", I think it would be plain
confusing (I know that I for sure would think "what in the name of some
fictious entity is this?!").
Why is this even a problem?
/Mike
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