For what it's worth (and I'm not one of the cabal, so take this as you
will) I believe that the suggestion in that thead -- by Karl Fogel, if I
recall correctly -- of adding a new property to dictate text/binary
handling is the right approach. It adheres to the principle of least
surprise, because the user must explicitly set it for those files where
they want out-of-character handling for application/* MIME-types, and it
follows two of the wiser tenets of the zen of python: "Special cases
aren't special enough to break the rules." and "In the face of
ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess."
John Peacock wrote:
> I got involved in several discussion on users (which I know you don't all read
> regularly) about changing the various "application/xml*" types to be text by
> default, the longest of which is here:
>
> http://svn.haxx.se/users/archive-2008-02/0096.shtml
>
> I still believe that I'm right and that Subversion shouldn't have an ever
> increasing set of exceptions enshrined in svn_mime_type_is_binary() for all of
> eternity. I can pursue the not-so-simple task of adding a new svn:text-type (a
> boolean flag) that would override the normal MIME handling for purposes of
> diff/merge only.
>
> It would only be a small patch to add a whole bunch of exceptions to
> svn_mime_type_is_binary(). Is that the wiser course? Am I just being a pedant
> and a crank to insist that because some XML files should be treated as binary
> that we can't make that sort of overarching assumption, just because it will
> help most people?
>
> TIA
>
> John
>
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--
Chris Rose
Developer Planet Consulting Group
(780) 577-8433
crose_at_planetci.com
Received on 2008-02-07 17:27:02 CET