*BSD News Article 63756


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From: Adam Megacz <kalessin@netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Ideal filesystem
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Mark Hahn wrote:
> 
> > AMEN! Linux REALLY NEEDS THIS. There are *so* many cool features that
> > can be implemented on top of EA's.
> 
> I've never seen a nonsilly feature that EA's or resource forks solved.
> and they introduce at least two problems:

Here's just a couple:
  - Comments on binary files
  - Icons for Xfilemanager, Xfm, etc...
  - Author of a file
  - MOST OF ALL, FILE TYPE! The standard UNIX mechanism for determining
file type is *almost* as crappy as WinDoze's (filename extensions). This
is one of the few areas where the Mac & OS/2 kick Linux's butt.
  - Short description of what a file does - this is a MAJOR help for
novice sysadmins. Also provides a more convenient place to store
"whatis" information.


>         - what's the interface to the extra stuff?  resources violate
>         the Unix concept of a file being just a byte-stream.  this isn't
>         a big deal within a machine, but what about other machines?

But don't permissions also violate that "concept"? EA's are just
general-purpose permissions bits. They reside in the inode, and move
around just as 


>         - why have just one resource fork?  why not have an arbitrary
>         number of attachments, each a seperate byte-stream.  hey, why not
>         make it a btree or something.  how about the keys: ints or strings?
>         why not arbitrary objects as keys?
That's exactly what EA's are - the data is stored as a stream on the
disk, but the application sees it as a miniature filesystem - a
hierarchy.


> the point is resources/EAs are poorly defined, and not designed at all.

NO - they provide FLEXIBILITY for the future.

-- 
Adam Megacz <kalessin@netcom.com>
Website ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/ka/kalessin/adam.html
Linux - OS/2