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Re: file extensions best practice

• To: "Christian Nentwich" <christian@s...>,"xml dev" <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Re: file extensions best practice
• From: "Bob Foster" <bob@o...>
• Date: Tue, 2 Sep 2003 07:14:25 -0500
• References: <1197291424.20030902115035@s...>

From: "Christian Nentwich" <christian@s...>
> I'm hoping to peruse some of your experience on this one. I'm
> currently evaluating the pros and cons of having product-specific file
> extensions instead of .xml. The pros seem obvious:
>
> - Distinguish the different files (our product has 3 or 4 file types)
> at a glance
> - The standard GUI file dialogs can filter without doing anything
> intelligent like parsing the headers of the file
>
> The cons (?):
>
> - The files are not recognisable as XML files anymore and the standard
> XML editors won't list them

You wouldn't want to use an editor that couldn't be configured to recognize
an arbitrary extension as an XML file. There are lots of these: .xsd, .xsl,
.web, etc. already.

> - Web servers won't generate the correct headers unless reconfigured

Yes.

> - The space for 3 digit file prefixes is small, and ours would look
> like .x?? which make sthe space even smaller

.x?? is already overused. Why pile on? Other than that, I don't see a
problem.

Bob Foster

> Is there anything I'm missing? What are people's opinions on this?
>
> Christian

• References:
  • file extensions best practice
    • From: Christian Nentwich <christian@s...>

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