• jPV
  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    jPV
    Posts: 2021 from 2003/2/24
    From: po-RNO
    Here's how I see the situation. Ambient's mime/filetypes system is highly inspired by filetype system in DOpus. On Amiga DOpus' filetypes were the best thing since the sliced bread and no other alternatives came even close. DOpus filetypes were much more advanced and versatile than, for example, the Deficons. If you know how to configure DOpus filetypes, you know how to configure Ambient's mimetypes from the settings GUI too. The upper (user) level configuration for actions for doubleclicking, context menus, and drag&drop is very similar on both and shouldn't cause any confusion, and is still the best thing since the sliced bread ;)

    The difference is how the internal recognizing of files is done. On DOpus you need a separate file in the Filetypes drawer for each type of file. There are some filetypes provided by default, but they aren't that comprehensive, and user has to create lots of own definitions when building the system. Ambient, OTOH, tries to provide recognition for as many file types as possible by default, the built-in recognition database is a single file (MOSSYS:Ambient/recognition.db) and tries to cover practically all known/standardized file types, and in most cases that is enough for normal users. If user wants to create custom filetypes not found in the database, he can do that by creating definitions to SYS:Prefs/Ambient/filetypes/ drawer. A text editor is needed for this with Ambient, compared to GUI in DOpus, but basically the format is similar on both and should look familiar. But the main point is that users usually shouldn't need to care about the recognizing settings at all with Ambient. Here is one example how to create a custom entry anyway.

    Now to the Barren's problem... there seems to be few filetype exceptions which aren't included in the recognition.db file and aren't shown in the Ambient Mime settings. These internal types just aren't probably meant to be editable by a user, maybe because if user cripples them, the whole system becomes crippled? AmigaOS 68k executables, MorphOS executables, and AmigaDOS script files seem to be such, and it sounds dangerous if user messes their execution or so. Of course it would be nice that you could edit certain options for them, but maybe it would have just added mess to Ambient settings GUI if some types should be handled in a different way from all others.

    But maybe there are ways to change them anyway if you insist. Maybe they still can be overridden by manual definition to that filetypes drawer. Make your own definition with bigger priority, or try to find out names and just add actions to them without changing the recognition, or something like that. And just to change the default icons, maybe Ambient would load different default icons for them if you'd have correctly named icons in SYS:Prefs/Presets/Deficons/ drawers, I'd be surprised if it wouldn't work, but if it really doesn't work, I'd say there's a room for a feature request :)


    Quote:

    Another issue... how can I set a MIME type for dos scripts ? I can't see a way to configure a filetype basing on
    its S flag. I wanted to specify some default options for it, like Edit, View, Execute


    If we can't find a way to edit Script options via custom filetypes, you can always have certain options for all files. I have Edit (CEd) option for "Global Actions for Files" mime type, and that gives me possibility to edit any files (including scripts) whenever I want. Maybe not as pretty, but works. And you never know what format files you need to edit, so it's there always. I sometimes even edit binary files with it ;) Similarly you could add options to execute, view etc there, or maybe make a submenu for these kind of functions which may not be usable for all files, but are there just in case.

    But anyway interesting topic and you have a point in these few exceptions... let's see what we can find out. I'll try to investigate more too :)


    [ Edited by jPV 31.01.2017 - 10:40 ]
  • »31.01.17 - 08:06
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