From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Horst von Brand Subject: Re: silent semantic changes with reiser4 Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 20:24:45 -0400 Message-ID: <200408280024.i7S0OjmB024038@localhost.localdomain> References: Cc: Spam , wichert@wiggy.net, jra@samba.org, torvalds@osdl.org, reiser@namesys.com, hch@lst.de, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, flx@namesys.com, reiserfs-list@namesys.com Return-path: list-help: list-unsubscribe: list-post: Errors-To: flx@namesys.com To: Andrew Morton In-Reply-To: Message from Andrew Morton of "Thu, 26 Aug 2004 04:20:43 MST." <20040826042043.15978b0a.akpm@osdl.org> List-Id: linux-fsdevel.vger.kernel.org Andrew Morton said: > Spam wrote: > > > > Secondly, do you expect file managers like Nautilus and Konqueror to > > support every piece of file format on the planet so they could read > > information directly from the documents? > > Sure. You're proposing that we implement a single, golden multi-stream file > format in the kernel. Which won't be able to cater for all needs, I'm afraid. Just look at /etc, and contemplate why there are so many different configuration file formats. Sure, some are just random coder preferences set in stone, but others do make sense being different. The same will happen with file formats. Heck, it is already that way, with file formats for C source code, ELF shared libraries, various graphics and audio and video formats, ... > We could just as well do that in libmultistreamfileformat.so. Right. > But I'll grant that one cannot go adding new metadata to, say, C files this > way. I don't know how useful such a thing is though. You can never know. Perhaps annotations in swahili? Alternative versions for different architectures? In object format(s)? Copyright info? Changelog? > Remember that my main point is that there's a lack of coordination in > userspace. Hell, there's none. Putting it in-kernel forces that > coordination, and may be the way to go, but it's pretty sad. I think that forcing coordination is wrong. For example, I do value having ar/tar/cpio/zip doing essentially the same thing (and being able to define and use my own way of doing it if it pleases me), and I'd strongly oppose the kernel forcing one way of doing it down my throat. -- Dr. Horst H. von Brand User #22616 counter.li.org Departamento de Informatica Fono: +56 32 654431 Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria +56 32 654239 Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile Fax: +56 32 797513