*BSD News Article 65687


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From: Adam Megacz <kalessin@netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Ideal filesystem
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> >   1) Elegance. If EA's are part of the filesystem, I can use all
> > those fun preexisting apps (cat, tar, cp, mv, ls) to manipulate them.
> > Not to mention stuff like xfilemanager.
 
> Ever seen (at the risk of earning flamage) WinNT's registry editor?
(adam laughs at the term "flamage"). EA's and a Registry do not do each
other's job; I strongly advocate a Registry for Linux (see my thread
"Idea for a Linux Registry"). I think we should go in the direction of
OS/2, which has both EA's *and* a registry.

> If metadata is manipulated by a library, then the names of files,
> whether data or application, becomes irrelevant, surely? The metadata
> is now under control of the application, the way it's stored on disk
> is no longer an issue.
But how can one app read another's metadata? BTW, EA's are designed to
hold stuff like a file's author, it's purpose, it's icon, and other
things like that. *Application Preferences* Belong in a library. Also,
the advantage of EA's in the filesystem is that they are "stuck to" the
file they belong with, and can't get orphaned.

> 
> >   3) The UNIX way (tm). It seems (IMHO) that integrating everything
> > into the filesystem is the UNIX way (tm). I really like it, and there
> > are others that do, too.
> 
> This is a philosophical point, and I'd very much like to disagree with
> you here; As far as _I_ can tell, the UNIX way (tm) is simplicity;
> the device driver drives devices;
And device drivers are in the filesystem -- what do you think /dev/* is?
>the filing system stores files;
Yup.
> the c library does buffered and formatted io;
Buffered I/O To and from the filesystem!
>ls is not a web browser.
Ever heard of the ftp filesystem? An HTTP version is on it's way :-)

> One level of abstraction per layer; metadata is application specific
> data,
NONONONONONO. A file's icon may be used by both xfm and moxfm and
xfilmanager; therefore it is NOT application specific.