[okular] [Bug 422574] File Open requires .pdf suffix to display in "All Supported Files"

[K.J. Petrie]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=422574

--- Comment #7 from K.J. Petrie <kde.bugs at kjpetrie.co.uk> ---
I'm sorry if I came over as arrogant. That was certainly not my intention. I
was upset by the summary and unexplained nature of the closure as "not a bug"
and the response when I asked for an explanation.

Expectations vary in the software and Internet worlds. I often explain it as
governed by "rules made by anarchists" in the sense that there are no actual
rules. Most Internet protocols are not officially standards but Requests for
Comment although, in practice, and RFC actually has to go through a fair amount
of peer review to become a recognised RFC. In the same way, in the Free
Software world (or should that be Open Source?) there are many interpretations
of how and why things ought to be. The distro I use, for instance, is adamantly
opposed to systemd, because it breaks the one program for each function
principle some consider essential to UNIX. So far as I know, no one has
actually defined such a rule; it's just an understanding that has grown up
among a certain subset of users and gets reinforced by agreement among those
subsets.

These expectations are often deeply held, and can cause clashes when
questioned, simply because there are no rules, and therefore no arbiter to whom
one can appeal, so robust statements of what is assumed to be true (but can
never be proved) tend to become dominant and tribal loyalties can form around
them.

However, it does seem sensible to me that a file which conforms to the
specification a program is intended to open should be considered a supported
file, and unless that specification includes a naming requirement the name
should not be the basis of such an identification.

The issue for me is that my bank makes PDF statements available for download,
but gives them all the same generic name, so I have to rename them. Since they
are stored in a directory which is only used for storing PDFs I saw no point in
adding ".pdf" to the end of all the new names, as that told me nothing I didn't
know and would de-emphasise the distinctive part of the name identifying the
individual statements. When I went to open these in Okular, leaving the filter
set at the default "All supported files" I couldn't see them, and it was
tedious to have to change the filter every time I wanted to open a different
statement, and since they appear to be supported files I considered this enough
of a problem to be worth reporting. It never occurred to me anyone would think
this intended behaviour.

I appreciate this comment adds nothing to the bug, but it seems that the
offence I took has also given offence, which was not my intention, so I must
apologise for that.

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