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Amelia A Lewis said:
> So ... when an application is opening a file in a file system, it
> typically won't care what the MIME type associated with that file is. In
> most cases, it either isn't given (and can't get) that metadata, or it
> just *doesn't care*. Most Windows programs care not at all about MIME
> types (they care about extensions, as Roger and Rick have noted); likewise
> programs written for MacOS didn't/don't care (they care about the
> four-letter type code).
>
> You can *say* that they map to MIME types, if you'd like, and if it's
> useful conceptually, but in fact, they don't. They're oblivious to MIME
> types.
And, in the case of graphics files at least on Windows (IE) it is more
complicated than that: a JPEG or a GIF extension can both be sent to the
same graphics handlers. So a file can be mislabelled (e.g. a GIF file
labelled with a JPEG extension) and still be rendered correctly, based on
information inside the file.
Cheers
Rick Jelliffe
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