On Tue, 28 Jun 2005 00:38:38 -0400, Kyle Moffett <mrmacman_g4@xxxxxxx> said:Ok. Those things should probably be divided up. Stuff like POSIX
extended attributes and such that have existing interfaces should use
those.
One of the claimed advantages of the '...' interface is that everything
is editable as a file. So if someone wanted to edit the description
extended attribute for foo.txt, he would just run
"[editor] foo.txt/.../description" (or
"[editor] /meta/fs/$(getattrpath foo.txt)/description"), instead of
needing to use some special purpose editor. It works well for things
like being able to use Gimp to edit a thumbnail or icon attribute.
The inspiration, I think, was the MacOS X/NeXTSTEP bundle format. For
example, MacOS X/NeXTSTEP .app file is actually a directory that behaves
much like an executable file (double-clicking a .app file in the Finder
launches the application, instead of opening the directory). However,
it is in reality a directory that contains many things that could be
thought of as extended attributes (such as the application icon,
information about the application, etc.). Since the application icon is
a real file, it can be edited by normal graphics editors (not like
Windows programs, where you need a special icon editor). And since it's
inside the .app directory, it's attached to the application (not like
Linux, where the program is in /usr/bin, and the icon is in
/usr/share/pixmaps), so it makes package management easier (to delete an
application, just delete the .app file -- don't need to look in
/usr/share/pixmaps for the icon and delete it).