Re: Image mode

[Chong Yidong]

Chris Moore <address@hidden> writes:

> > I disagree.  Firefox is primarily for displaying text, and
> > Openoffice.org is commonly used for editing formatted text.
>
> Firefox is a web browser (it views but doesn't edit a mixture of text
> and images) and Openoffice.org is an ofice suite (allowing the editing
> of text, spreadsheets, databases, drawings, etc).

The important point is that these programs have to make a choice about
whether to handle a file as an image or as text, just as Emacs does.

> What about files with extensions of ".blah"?  If they contain image
> data, are they misnamed?  I would expect to be safe opening a .blah
> file, knowing that it's not a recognised extension, I feel safe
> knowing it'll be opening in fundamental-mode.  It seems several people
> on the list would rather display this .blah file as an image.

It's not merely an idiosyncrasy of the people on this mailing list.
Firefox, for example, has settled on this behavior: i.e., handle a
file as an image if it is autodetected as an image and we can't find
another match for it in (Firefox's equivalent of) auto-mode-alist.