Portable file names

[Ken Ray]

Rob,

> You've made your position on file name extensions clear; but let me
> ask this:  Might it be a good idea to exclude extensions on files one
> does NOT want the user to open by double-clicking?

Personally I don't think it's a good idea; IMHO it doesn't "say" anything
about what *might* be in the file, so it causes the curious to probe
further, and makes the others a bit skeptical about why the file is there in
the first place. That said, if you just add an arbitrary extension that you
aren't supporting (like Dar provided: "private_data.rob"), you never know if
there's some other app out there using that extension, and thus it may look
like it belongs to another program when it really doesn't.

My personal opinion is that all files that are distributed with a program
should have file extensions that are registered to the program. If you
double-click on that is just a data holder and is not a "document", the
program should still launch and then display a dialog saying something like:
"Sorry, but this file is not editable." with an "Quit" button. This gets
around both problems of (a) not having an extension at all and (b) providing
one you're not trapping yourself.

Just my $0.02,

Ken Ray
Sons of Thunder Software
Email: kray at sonsothunder.com
Web Site: http://www.sonsothunder.com/