Proponent of Rube Goldberg-like contraptions for storing "extendent
information" about files claim that an obvious answer of using
directories for such purpose is "brittle". A long real-life experies
from NeXTSTEP does not support that.
On NeXT various "NeXT Apps" are simply directory tries and command line
tools do not even try to hide that fact. If you are using graphical
file tools then by default they will show up as a single entity but an
extra command, not hidden very deeply :-), will allow you to open such
unit as a directory and get to components separately. This is,
actually, a _good thing_ as a user can, for example, adjust and
customize various interface elements using Interface Builder. After
many years when NeXTSTEP is around I do not recall serious complaints
that this leads to a breakage and if somebody will acutally mess
something up then things are easily fixable.
OTOH various other complicated schemes for storing a meta-information
invariably turn out to be a major PITA and _really brittle_ outside
their very narrowly defined "native environments" and break regularly
when somebody will do something "unexpected" (read - use some standard
and universal tool).
With all this evidence in mind I watch pretty amazed when this
discussion periodically flares up and various kludges are proposed
as if nobody tried something like that in the past.
Michal
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