Public bug reported:
When gnome checks a file's type, it looks at the file extension and also
sniffs the file. If both methods yield different results, which is
probably half the time, it'll refuse to open the file.
For example, I double clicked a .planner file, and instead of opening it, it
warned me that it's also an xml document, which all .planner files are, and
refused to open it.
If I double click a .wmv file, it warns me that it's an asf file (which most
.wmv's are), and won't open it.
If I have a .txt file with xml or html inside it, it won't open it.
I've double clicked .cpp files, only to be warned that they're GEM documents or
something, which I've never heard of.
And so on.
My general idea here is that sniffing is always going to be troublesome
and unreliable. Trusting it puts its own wisdom over that of the user
and it's almost without exception always wrong when there's
disagreement. The "security" warning adds absolutely no protection and
in my opinion sniffing should be used only as a last resort when the
extension is insufficient for determining the file type. This is the
oldest and most obvious bug I know of in Gnome 2.x.
I would have searched for duplicate bug reports to comment on instead,
but oddly enough Launchpad doesn't seem to have a bug search feature.
How could we go about creating a bounty for this? I'd gladly donate $50
towards the goal of getting this fixed (no unneeded sniffing, no refusal
to open files) _and_ included in the next official Gnome release. I
donated as much directly to the Gnome project via paypal the last time I
brought this up, and I think they ignored me. Bounties are better.
** Affects: gnome-vfs (Ubuntu)
Importance: Undecided
Status: Unconfirmed
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Wrong approach to file type identification
https://launchpad.net/bugs/73265
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