File save: system offers wrong extension

Issues with installing under all versions of MS Windows
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TAB
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File save: system offers wrong extension

Post by TAB »

Suppose I have written file Fila.odt,and I have prepared an associated spreadsheet, which I logically want to save as Fila.ods; in fact,System offers me, in the 'Save as' dialog, the automatic extension .ods. Nice. Now, I start typing 'Fil..',and System suggests the existing filename 'Fila.odt'. Why not 'Fila.ods'? Maybe I want to use the wrong extension and overwrite an existing file (Fila.odt) --but that's unlikely. So, System forces me to click on the "save as type' pull-down menu to restore the automatic extension .ods. Annoying. Default offers are supposed to help, not to hinder, the user.
Now, 'System' (above) may be OpenOffice; or, is it Windows? Either way,I will appreciate your suggestions to improve this behaviour.
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squenson
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Re: file save: system offers wrong extension

Post by squenson »

This is more a Windows behavior rather than a specific OOo issue. But if you click on the checkbox "Automatic file extension", you'll get better results as only the files of the selected type are displayed when you start typing:
qwe.PNG
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Re: file save: system offers wrong extension

Post by TAB »

squenson wrote:If you click on the checkbox "Automatic file extension", [..] only the files of the selected type are displayed when you start typing
True, 'only the files of the selected type are displayed' but, when I start typing, say, 'L', Windows offers me all files of all types that begin with 'L', not just those with the specified extension.
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Re: File save: system offers wrong extension

Post by Villeroy »

My observation under Linux:
It offers to save the speadsheet as file.odt, but with auto-extension it actually stores file.odt.ods.
If the suggested file name has the .ods-suffix then it prompts if you want to overwrite the file.
Please, edit this topic's initial post and add "[Solved]" to the subject line if your problem has been solved.
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squenson
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Re: File save: system offers wrong extension

Post by squenson »

Under Windows XP, it only offers the .odt file name, not the .ods, when I want to save a Writer document. I must be lucky! 8-)
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Re: File save: system offers wrong extension

Post by TAB »

Villeroy wrote:My observation under Linux:
It offers to save the speadsheet as file.odt, but with auto-extension it actually stores file.odt.ods.
If the suggested file name has the .ods-suffix then it prompts if you want to overwrite the file.
What good is that? Most users want file.ods, not file.odt.ods.
Windows does not offer the double extension; it asks if you want to overwrite file.odt.
It seems that these OS, while trying to help the user with some 'natural' default name, get in his/her way instead with some dumb suggestions ('odt' for a speadsheet) or actions (a double file extension)!.
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Re: File save: system offers wrong extension

Post by TAB »

squenson wrote:Under Windows XP, it only offers the .odt file name, not the .ods, when I want to save a Writer document. I must be lucky! 8-)
Not really. The extension .odt is expected for a Writer document. (Why would Windows offer the .ods extension?) The problem discussed is writing another type of document associated with the Writer document.
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Re: File save: system offers wrong extension

Post by squenson »

I don't know how I did my tests, but I was wrong. If I have two documents, qwe.ods and qwe.odp, and I want to save a Writer file qwe.odt, it indeed offers me the other names when I start typing the first letters of "qwe.", so we are -- at least I am! -- back to square one, it seems...
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Re: File save: system offers wrong extension

Post by Villeroy »

It offers the file name completions of whatever matching file names regardless of extension.
If the choosen file has the automatic extension already it will prompt for overwrite. In any other case it will append the automatic extension.
File name extensions have no meaning except for desktop systems which decide use the extension indicator for the default application to handle the file. OOo handles any file having any extension or none at all.
Please, edit this topic's initial post and add "[Solved]" to the subject line if your problem has been solved.
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Re: File save: system offers wrong extension

Post by TAB »

Villeroy wrote:It offers the file name completions of whatever matching file names regardless of extension.
It should not. What's the point of the box 'automatic extension'?
Under Windows, as you wrote (below), the extension designates the default application. Why should Windows offer the 'wrong' extension? (I can enter any extension I like, but that's another matter.)
Villeroy wrote:If the chosen file has the automatic extension already ...
...or any other!
Villeroy wrote:File name extensions have no meaning except for desktop systems which decide use the extension indicator for the default application to handle the file.
That's a pretty big meaning! In fact, Windows warns that, if you change the extension, the file 'may become unusable'. Change 'File.odt' to 'File.txt', and the icon changes; click on it, and Notepad (or whatever basic editor is in service) tries to open it.
In any case, if I want to name 2 files Tx08.odt and Tx08.ods, it's not for lack of imagination; it's to show that one is a writer document and the other is the associated spreadsheet for my 2008 taxes.
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Re: File save: system offers wrong extension

Post by Villeroy »

Windows is a completely idiotic system. The warning about "unusable" files is for totally computer illiterate users who do not know any way to deal with a file other than double-click.
Renaming a file, changing it's suffix or removing it completely does not change one single byte of the file.

The point of automatic extension is, that every file name gets the suffix that should be used by convention but not by technical requirements. It's all about icons and default applications.
Please, edit this topic's initial post and add "[Solved]" to the subject line if your problem has been solved.
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Re: File save: system offers wrong extension

Post by TAB »

Villeroy wrote:Windows is a completely idiotic system. The warning about "unusable" files is for totally computer illiterate users who do not know any way to deal with a file other than double-click.
Renaming a file, changing it's suffix or removing it completely does not change one single byte of the file.
Agreed. Still, if I change file extensions (just to prove your point) and reopen the folder a month later, I will likely get all mixed up if my .jpg files look like Calc files and some Writer files have been 'changed' to .gif! In fact, I have sometimes saved files (inadvertently) without any extension, only to wonder later what that strange file is!
And Linux also uses extensions...
Anyway, this does not solve the problem we started with.
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Re: File save: system offers wrong extension

Post by Villeroy »

TAB wrote:And Linux also uses extensions...
Only the "desktop environments" use the extension in a similar way as Windows does while not beeing that insisting about the "right" name suffix. My favourite file manager dives into any zip archive regardless of the extension (for instance ODF documents).
This forum demonstates that there must be millions of long time computer users out there, horribly alienated by the Windows system and all those pop-up warnings, hidden parts of file names, meaningful icons and meaningless file attributes.
 Edit: Under Linux I just removed all file name extensions in a directory with many types of files. Most of the files still show the correct icon and use the right default application. PDF, multimedia and ODF documents are handled correctly, oxt-extensions are still recognized as zip-archives. I can throw any file to OOo and it handles the file regardless of the extension. 
Please, edit this topic's initial post and add "[Solved]" to the subject line if your problem has been solved.
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