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

[Daedalus]

I think DefIcons comes pre-configured for most common filetypes, such as JPEG. Check in the prefs of DefIcons, look for JPEG and see what action it is set to carry out... Change that action to use whatever viewer you like on your system and it should work. Of course, JPEG files *with* an icon/.info file will use the default tool set in the .info file instead. This allows you to override the DefIcons settings for specific files.

I personally think the Amiga system is great once you get your head around it. And RaWBInfo makes handling them a lot easier, allowing you to drag 'n' drop tooltypes etc. in Workbench.

[Daedalus]

@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...

[Daedalus]

Hmmm... I was actually thinking of the one that came with OS 3.9 - I was sure that was available separately for 3.0 users, but it's a different tool to the one you linked to...

[Daedalus]

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.

I understand where you're coming from here, but maybe improved OS handling would be better. For example, being able to open an Icon Information window for multiple selections meaning you can highlight all the files you want and change the default tool only once to have them all open with the same app. Same for the shell, perhaps it could have optional functionality to treat .info files as part of the main file or separately, the way Workbench 4.1 now does - just check a menu item and they're separate files; uncheck it and they're the same file and therefore are moved, renamed, copied and deleted just as their parent file is.