.info ... was it so much a good idea?

[persia]

.info was an ok idea in 1985 when you only had small capacity devices but really makes little or no sense in these days of TB hard drives.

[persia]

The problem is multiplication of files.  If I have six files and six dot info files it isn't bad, I can easily see things in a command line and it's all ver manageable. If I have 6000 it's a lot less clear, six thousand .info files to maintain is more than a bit daunting, I can't just do a global change for example.  I have thousands of .doc files on my main machine and I recently changed the program associated with all of them from MS Word to Pages with a shift-click, a selection of Get Info and change the app associated with them.  It was clean and now all .docs open Pages.

Using file extensions may not be the best solution but it's really the only one that works.

@persia

I don't really see how disc capacity is an issue. If the information was embedded in the file instead it would take roughly the same amount of disc space. The Mac system of data and resource forks was similar but less easy to manipulate, and the Windows & Linux systems are just a mess altogether, although I believe Windows 7 has the ability to specify specific applications to open specific files, overriding the filetype recognition...

[persia]

Microsoft is the only company that tries to maintain a central repository for all system settings (aka the Registry), most other systems maintain them through multiple config files that are easier to check.  You don't have to store everything in one place to control everything from one place.

That being said, what percentage of Mac users (for example) ever check their plist files or even know what the plist files are?