ILBM or IFF

When saving an image with ILBM datatype, should the extension be .ilbm or .iff? Either is right, just looking for a preference from the masses.

@mritter0

.lbm

or

.ilbm

not .iff as iff is not necessarily an image.

I would say the opposite.

First of all do not use .lbm. This is from stupid M$-DOS crowd who have to pack everyting into three letters. It has no meaing for an Amiga person except for a bad smell.

.ilbm would be most meaningful but is unusual.

.iff is used by most programs and people, although it does not uniquely identify a picture file.

@thomas

calling it .iff is not very informative.. as it could be grapahics, sound, text or other stuff

personaly I sort of like .lbm

René

@thomas

Whilst I do prefer the full #?.ilbm I'm fairly sure that DPaint (early versions at least) used #?.lbm and since DPaint was written by the inventors of IFF that would seem to be definitive version.

Anyway if you are going to pull the "amiga" card there should be no file extension at all...

Quote:
I agree with this.

@broadblues, TSK

Quote:
But then again, file extensions can greatly facilitate and speed up file manipulation, if you use wildcard selection in a manager like Filer. I use that all the time.

@trixie

I quite agree

@mritter0

AS you can see there is not really a consensus among the 'masses', you should allow the user to choose...

Since file extensions were originally designed as a means of identifying a specific file type, I would say an ILBM image should have a .ilbm extension. If you look at the original IFF definitions or the IFF registry at http://wiki.amigaos.net/wiki/IFF_FORM_and_Chunk_Registry it is obvious that an .iff extension could indicate dozens (or more) of file types and not a specific file type. Almost any Amiga user will recognize a file with an .ilbm extension as an image file but have no idea what kind of file it is if it has an .iff extension.

@mritter0

I vote for .ilbm .iff is too generic and .lbm just looks odd and is a medical therm.

I dislike programs that insist on extensions. Either read or write.

@Thematic

Quote:
File extensions have proven to bring more benefits than disadvantages. If they didn't, they would disappear right after the 8.3-character MS-DOS filename limitation was gone. Isn't it that today's operating systems support DOS names long enough to not require any extension, and computers are fast enough to let programs scan file type from the file contents? Yet extensions are still with us.

I see the file extension as a courtesy to the user: it tells me what kind of file I'm dealing with. For example, if I came across a file called "AmericanPsycho", I wouldn't know if it's a film, an audiobook, an e-book (PDF? ePub? plain text?), or a picture of the book's front page. I would have to open or binary scan the file, or try to wild-guess at the format from the file size. All these are extra steps that the file extension saves me from taking.

Another advantage for the user I have already mentioned in a post above: with extensions, I can use the file manager to group-select files automatically based on a wildcard pattern. If there are no extensions, I need to do that manually.

I would also like to add that filetype recognition systems like our DefIcons are not designed to deal with container-based file types via identifying content patterns. For example, a .zip archive, an .rp9 package, and an .epub book will contain the same binary header. The extension is the only way for DefIcons to distinguish between these.

@trixie Quote:
File extension are only still with us, because they are the lowest common denominator (that still works reasonably well across all systems).

There ARE better ways, but it's hard for them to take over, when (for example) Windows doesn't support them. e.g. BeOS/Haiku had/has filetype information stored as filesystem meta data (using it's database-like filesystem).

P.S. I'm not saying whether or not file extensions should be used on the Amiga - that's a more complex discussion. (Although I suspect it should be the default, BUT not enforced/required, which is pretty much how most Amiga programs treat file extensions anyway.)

@all

In my brief "research" of looking at some archives on Aminet, I did not see any .ilbm images, just .iff. I am going with .ilbm, though.

I agree .iff is vague, but usually you have a drawer for images, a drawer for music, etc.

I agree with Trixie, there should always be an extension. Quick visual recognition. Easy selection.