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Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 21:48:41 +0100
From: Jamie Lokier <jamie@shareable.org>
To: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>, Diego Calleja <diegocg@teleline.es>,
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Subject: Re: silent semantic changes with reiser4
Message-ID: <20040826204841.GC5733@mail.shareable.org>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.58.0408261217140.2304@ppc970.osdl.org> <Pine.LNX.4.44.0408261607070.27909-100000@chimarrao.boston.redhat.com>
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Rik van Riel wrote:
> For objects that do both, how does the user choose ?
> 
> Do we really want to have a file paradigm that's different
> from the other OSes out there ?

What does MacOS X do?  Someone said that documents are directories in
it; it must know how to handle that.

What does Windows do when you click on a .zip file and WinZIP is
installed?  It opens the .zip file and lets you explore inside.  When
you click on a .doc file, though, it opens a viewer or editor -- you
don't get the option to look inside.

> What happens when users want to transfer data from Linux
> to another system ?

This is why I favour storing all essential metadata (about the file's
content) inside the file's contents, the primary stream.

We have another problem: what happens when users want to transfer data
from Windows (with secondary streams) and MacOS (with resource forks)?

-- Jamie