From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: mjt@nysv.org (Markus =?ISO-8859-1?Q?=20T=F6rnqvist?=) Subject: Re: silent semantic changes with reiser4 Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2004 18:17:29 +0300 Sender: linux-fsdevel-owner@vger.kernel.org Message-ID: <20040829151729.GC26192@nysv.org> References: <1453776111.20040826131547@tnonline.net> <200408272358.i7RNweGh002703@localhost.localdomain> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: Spam , Andrew Morton , 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: Received: from nysv.org ([213.157.66.145]:54207 "EHLO nysv.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S268014AbUH2PTN (ORCPT ); Sun, 29 Aug 2004 11:19:13 -0400 To: Horst von Brand Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <200408272358.i7RNweGh002703@localhost.localdomain> List-Id: linux-fsdevel.vger.kernel.org On Fri, Aug 27, 2004 at 07:58:40PM -0400, Horst von Brand wrote: > >So the _kernel_ has to know about thousands of formats, just in case it >some blue day it comes across a strange file? Better leave that to the >applications. Or come up with a way to export some interface to userspace. Or make a standard description format in something like XML that can be used for arbitrary files and have userspace interface with that metadata stream that is the XML. This is, however, dangerously close to what we have now and does. not. work, so the only added bonus we might have is the fact that it's endorsed by the kernel. I don't like this idea except as a last fallback solution... >> I use this in Windows quite much. >Then use it and be happy. No need to screw up Linux for that. Linux does not need to be screwed up by that. It can be done right. >The descriptions might make sense to _you_, _now_. No guarantee they make >any sense (or are in the least useful) for other users on your system, and They also make perfect sense to me, and I would like this to have had this yesterday. or last year ;) >I might want them in arabic or some such. The descriptions might make no >sense to you in a couple of years. So what do you do if you use someone else's system and he doesn't have Arabic man pages but you want them in Arabic? And a description that doesn't make sense in many years is badly formed. >> 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? >That's their (self-selected) job, yes. Sure, but they store it differently in different places. Having them in the actual file makes it universal. I think the biggest issue is that you are arguing against this out of some principle. There is a certain want for these new features among the users, there are people who are willing to implement them, there is Linus who seems to agree and accept. What do you, and people who agree with you, lose if this gets implemented? Drive space when you have the slightly-grown kernel sources downloaded? -- mjt