Somewhere on Shadow Earth, Alexander Viro wrote:
>1001st time: icons are _NOT_ file properties.
>They depend on user. Get over it, already...
Actually, in (for example) Mac OS, icons *ARE* file properties (if a
custom icon is assigned to a given filesystem object). "Get with it,
already..." Icons can also be defaulted by the operating system based on
.. <drumroll please> ... OS filesystem metadata (ie a file of type
'TEXT' and creator 'R*ch' is displayed with the default icon for BBEdit
files. It has naught to do with the users.
Now, in Unixland, this is currently not the way things are done.
Howsomeever, methinks at least part of that is because ... <second,
longer drumroll> ... Unix has not supported the notion of files with
metadata. So saying that because Unix doesn't do it that way, that must
be the right and *ONLY* way to do it (with your statement above) seems
rather lacking in historical perspective.
Think of it this way: The permissions of a file are considered part of
the file from the Unix perspective. How are they intrinsically different
from an icon? They are not. It is simply historical accident that Unix
needed the notion of file permissions, and did not need the notion of
icons. And while I think Unix has a lot of nifty features in the OS
arena, it is NOT the "One True Way." "Get over it, already..."
And to follow up on other points in the metadata debate:
Yes, some standard tools like mv, cp, cpio, tar, and so on will need to
be rewritten to support FS metadata (however it is stored). And yes,
there are times and situations where the metadata will be lost (it
happens in the Mac world, for example). But having native support for
this on my Linux box, even if it does come with some strings attached,
and some limitations, would be better than the current "head-in-the-sand"
approach that many seem to be advocating. As Linus said, many other OSes
out there (include the two that run the vast majority of desktop
machines) already have some form of metadata, and so the debate is not
whether this is a good thing, but how to most transparently support it in
Linux.
-- Timothy Knox tdk@thelbane.com "The church is near but the road is icy; the bar is far away but I will walk carefully." -- Russian proverb- 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 - 21:00:28 EST