Mo McKinlay <mmckinlay@gnu.org> said:
[...]
> How would applications use them? Ultimately, I don't know. For GUIs,
> EAs/small ``unreliable'' forks could be useful. Same applies to web
> servers (storing MIME types as EAs to override the default would be
> mightily handy). Streams and structured storage are a different kettle of
> fish. I could think of a million and one uses for *those* (do the words
> 'composite document' mean anything to anybody? :>).
If nobody can come up with a reasonable use for a feature, it may as well
stay lost. As for "structured <whatever>", the OS-imposed structure will be
useless for half of the users, and awkward at best for most of the other
half. AFAIU, the move _away_ from structured files was one of the greater
achievements of Unix. And what I've seen in terms of discussion of the use
on Macs lets me to believe that extant use it is (a) single-user mentality
(icon for a file) or (b) gross abuse of the mechanism (store the
interpreter for the file in a fork, use forks to store versions for
different architectures, ...)
Sure, if it is in filesystems which Linux supports, Linux should provide
support. But it could very well be support in form of specialized utilities
(for one example, mtools is a much better idea for floppies than mounting
them, IMVHO), not necesarily integrated into the OS and breaking everything
in sight that is portable to/from other Unices. We aren't (yet? :) big
enough to dictate terms in this area.
[...]
> [As a belated reply: System-wide default icons? Hell, yes. Installed by
> 'make install', and then can be overriden by the file owner. Personally,
> I don't see what the issue is, most icons on a KDE or GNOME desktop are
> links, which have their own icon storage space anyway. If you're putting
> an actual executable on a desktop that you want a custom icon for, the
> chances are pretty high that you own the file in the first place]
Precisely the other way around: I want to use the cool new icon for
application <foo>, which I don't own. So icon storage has to be (at least
sometimes) separate from the file itself. Then it is just easier to keep it
separate always. Plus you can share icon storage if they are separate
entities. And finally, if files are mini-filesystems inside, why not just
use the filesystem itself, and go out of your way to duplicate the
functionality?
-- Horst von Brand vonbrand@sleipnir.valparaiso.cl Casilla 9G, Vin~a del Mar, Chile +56 32 672616- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Aug 15 2000 - 21:00:31 EST