Re: Files with a substructre should be directories.

Steven D'Aprano schrieb:
> 
> On Sun, 26 May 2002 23:38, Friedrich W. H. Kossebau wrote:
> 
> > The mimetype would be based on the ending, e.g. ".album", so the
> > directory "BestOf.album" would be of mimetype application/album. You
> > still are able to access each mp3-file on filesystem level.
> 
> Oh great, here we go again.
> 
> The use of file extensions is an ugly hack from DOS. Its bad enough
> that we have to support them for backwards compatibility and for the
> benefit of Windows users without extending it into new domains.

Uhm, and where does that ugly hack stem from to use a trailing dot to
mark
the metadata "hide in standard listings/views"? How were c-source files
and their corresponding header-files named before the apperance of DOS?
Without the endings ".c" and ".h"? I don't know but doubt it was
different.
 
> One of the benefits of metadata (real metadata in the file system, not
> pretend metadata in the file) is that you can associate a file type to
> a file without having to call it <name>.<type>. The same can apply to
> directories.

On the other side it is not that bad. Do a "ls" on your commandline.
Imagine all the file extensions gone. Can you still say what type a file
is? Even the colors if set won't help you that much. 

I agree with you that there should not be too much metadata in the
filename, like in your "mom_recipe.txt.pasta_recipes". But sometimes it
is useful, to have one or the other information about the content or
type coupled so closely to the filename.

Until we have a fully working metadata system we should use the proven
to work in an acceptable way system of file extensions and extent it for
further use. When a metadata system is in place we could swap easily.
 
Friedrich