Comment by someweirdperson
4 years ago
ls doesn't show a preview either.
When forced to use windows the first thing I do is turn this feature off. Something doesn't feel right when a tool to list files tries to process content of files (e.g. image processing did come with severe security holes in the past, and it probably still does today).
Both of my toilets are working perfectly though.
Your toilets work because you keep a jug of water next to them to pour directly into the bowl to flush it, because you disconnected the toilet tank. You've decided that a tool that tries to remove waste shouldn't also intake water. After all, intakes have failed in the past and flooded houses.
Better to do that part by hand to be on the safe side.
This is the nature of desktop UI. Your argument for purity of function is sound, but users want their desktop UI to read images for thumbnails and previews anyway because an image file means more to them, semantically, than a pile of inscrutable bits inside a file pointer. Desktops, over time, become a junk drawer of the features "most users want" for "controlling their computer" in the space between dedicated programs.
file-picker is a GUI tool whose language is visual instead of text. If ls must do text processing and formatting to output that colorful list, so too must file-picker do image processing to complete its function.