Re: silent semantic changes with reiser4

Spam
2004-08-31T23:20:58Z

> Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> writes:

>> In a graphical environment, the "icon" stream is a good example of this.
>> It literally has _nothing_ to do with the data in the main stream. The
>> only linkage is a totally non-technical one, where the user wanted to
>> associate a secondary stream with the main stream _without_ altering the
>> main one. THAT is where named streams make sense.

> I think that the "icon" argument for named streams is a silly
> argument, since different users may want to have different icons for
> the same file. Say that I want /usr/bin/emacs to have the enterprise
> icon and someone else wants the gnu head icon. And besides, root owns
> the file anyways, so neither of us mortal users should be able to add
> a stream to it.

Yet again are we thinking in blocking ways. Firstly this was an
example. Usually, though, most users accept the default icon for a
file. If they do not they can still change the icon for the link
they make on their start-menu/home folder/etc.

> Another reason for named streams that usually crops up is the ability
> set a "preferred application" for a certain file, so that when I
> double click on a document I want to open it with antiword instead of
> openoffice. But the same contra-argument applies here, different
> users have different preferences.

I can make the same argument as for the icons.

> I can see the argument for having the equivalent of Content-type or
> Content-transfer-encoding as a named stream though.

That would be a nice thing.

> /Christer