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Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.bhp.com.au!mel.dit.csiro.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.uoknor.edu!news.nodak.edu!netnews1.nwnet.net!news.u.washington.edu!uw-beaver!uhog.mit.edu!news.mathworks.com!uunet!in1.uu.net!mail2news.alias.net!myriad!mylinuxbox!suck!netcom.com!kalessin From: Adam Megacz <kalessin@netcom.com> Subject: Re: Ideal filesystem Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Message-ID: <31745617.3E43CCA3@netcom.com> Sender: kalessin@netcom14.netcom.com Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) References: <4hptj4$cf4@cville-srv.wam.umd.edu> <4jpjb6$77c@park.uvsc.edu> <jlemonDpEw1v.4Ez@netcom.com> <4kfoqd$dgs@coyote.Artisoft.COM> <DpvCB7.xn@midway.uchicago.edu> <199604161704.SAA02116@kythera.demon.co.uk> <31740EB4.20617DC8@lambert.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 02:23:19 GMT X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.01 (X11; I; Linux 1.2.13 i486) Lines: 43 Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.development.system:21699 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:17612 > To be blunt: why do you want to manipulate EA's with existing > tools? Some people really *love* Emacs. Why not let them use it with EA's? Why make them rewrite emacs just so it can read EA's? > When you add an EA, you are adding something supranormal -- > something that you could not use an existing tool on in the > first place. I disagree. Consider "cat" (a clearly "existing tool") $ cat /usr/bin/netscape/.EAs/purpose Netscape is a World Wide Web Browser $ cat ~/foobar/.EAs/filetype HTML $ cat ~/kwigibo.sgml/.EAs/author Terry Lambert > Exposing attributes in the FS namespace seems silly. > To do so > requires duplicating access control semantics for each EA to > get it back to the level of control available to normal FS > objects: owner, group, permissions, etc.. You end up needing > nearly as much information as you do for a regular file. So? As was previously said, "inodes are cheap". Try "df -i" If you're really obsessed with saving space, there can be a filesystem-wide option declaring that EA's share their parent file's permissions. However, I myself would not advocate using this option except where disk space is at an acute premium. > To put this another way: I can't edit the default icon for > an application now with existing tools, so I need not support > that type of access for the association "default icon" in a > new implementation. How about # XV /usr/bin/knews/.EAs/icon So you *can* edit the default icon for an application now with existing tools (XV).