file attributes

[This space 4 rent]

In article <1743 at sranha.sra.co.jp> erik at sra.co.jp (Erik M. van der Poel) writes:

   On the Macintosh, it is possible to double click on the icon that
   represents a file to invoke the application associated with that file.
   It is difficult to build a GUI (graphical user interface) to do the
   same for Unix systems, since Unix does not offer a standard way of
   attaching an application name to a file.

[unnecessary new system call discussion deleted]

   Comments?
   -
   -- 
   Erik M. van der Poel                                      erik at sra.co.jp
   Software Research Associates, Inc., Tokyo, Japan     TEL +81-3-3234-2692

Um, I think that many GUIs have this already.  For example, under the Sun
Openwindows (version 2) filemanager, data files can be typed using the output
from file(1) or by the name of the file itself, and then the proper application
is called.  In my environment, files ending in .c, when double-clicked, bring
up emacs in c-mode, file in buffer.  Files that file(1) reports as being
postscript, when double-clicked, bring up the postscript previewer.  The
file command has all the power to extend this to work on, say, RMAIL files.

John.

----------------------------------------
John Early                             |
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