> Raul Miller <rdm@test.legislate.com> writes:
> > Elliot Lee <sopwith@redhat.com> wrote:
> > > Did I forgot to bash any other approaches? ;-)
> >
> > You forgot the "embed it in the file" approach.
> >
> Bad idea, IMHO. We want the non-meta data to be readable with the usual
> semantics, i.e. read and lseek do what they are specified to do, for _all_
> file formats.
>
> > Of course, to write a file you'll have to train your system to
> > deal with a lot of common file formats, and the meta-data will
> > probably look ugly in a standard editor.
> >
> You'll have to train _all_ your utilities, i.e. you need to use a preload
> library. NO WAY, especially for non-Linux/Slowaris platforms which don't
> have these in the first place.
>
> IMHO, we should start with specifying what the solution should look like.
>
> - access to normal files must be identical whether or not the file has
> attributes or whatever (i.e. no AppleSingle solution where the metadata
> for a file reside at the beginning of said file, no "the file's data are
> really in the file 'filename/data'"),
> - a normal recursive directory copy (via NFS, or whatever) will also copy
> the metadata
> - there should be no visual clutter (i.e., no AppleDouble solution, where
> the metadata for "foo" reside in "%foo" or "foo.res")
> - no kernel hack, because the solution needs to work on systems where we
> cannot _do_ any kernel hacks.
>
> The only solution I can think of which supports all of these is to use some
> sort of dot.directory.
>
> --
> Matthias Urlichs | noris network GmbH | smurf@noris.de
Ummmm.... All of the above sound fine except the last bullet and the conclusion.
As far as I can see, the absolute only way to handle this is kernel support.
Hopefully, someone comes up with a cross-platform metadata-interface standard.
Until then, the big thing is to support the metadata in a nice way. Hopefully,
utilities and programs will be modified to make use of the feature. None of them
should depend on it.
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