Re: Moving away from app-centric mimetypes (e.g. kword)

On Wed, 15 May 2002 03:40, Sven Niedner wrote:
> On Tuesday 14 May 2002 17:15, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> > Metadata will be stored in the file's parent directory, perhaps in
> > the .directory file. I propose this, not because I think its the best
> > solution, but because it is a *reasonable* solution -- its faster
> > than using a central database, and KDE already reads the .directory
> > file when needed, so KDE isn't doing excessively more work.
>
> No, please not. This is a quick-and-dirty hack, that would cause severe
>
> problems later on:
> > The disadvantages are that, if you move or rename a file, you lose
> > the metadata. But since this is a Proof Of Concept, and not a perfect
> > implementation, perhaps we can live with that limitation in the short
> > term.
> >
> > Comments?
You've missed a key issue. KOffice (at least) uses .tar.gz (going to .zip) 
files to store data. So a .kwd file is really a .zip file. You want to add 
metadata - just put it in the .kwd as a standard name.

If you want that metadata to mean anything, you'll have to add KDE (and GNOME, 
and whatever else) support for filemanagers and so on anyway, whether it is 
in a directory or in a file. And keeping it in the file means total 
portability. The only downside is that you have to access every file to do a 
search, instead of every directory.

Brad

-- 
http://conf.linux.org.au. 22-25Jan2003. Perth, Australia. Birds in Black.