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

On Saturday 18 May 2002 04:25, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> Speaking as a user, I may or may not want to apply metadata to a
> directory, but otherwise the concept of a directory as a place you
> store related files is too useful to get rid of. Why do you want to do
> this?

??? I thoroughly don't.   Files are a place where people store related
information. Directories are a place where people store related files.
Files are Information.   Why can't I CD into the permissions of a file,
or CD into its mime type ?
Directories ~ Files.

for metadata, one can invisage a directory interface to "classic"
unix permissions, for example.
(I'm not saying this _particular_ scheme is any good, just an illustrative
possibility..)

$ cd /permissions/usr/local/bin/dodgyexe/
(or cd /usr/local/bin/dodgyexe/permissions/)

$  s -l
user  -> /users/david
group -> /groups/pants
read/
write/
execute/
$ ls -l read/
user
group
other



Most complex file formats effectively incorporate half-assed directories or
full database  structures already.  XML _is_ a tree structure.   (XML is just
lisp sexps reimplemented badly, too, but that's another rant)
The windoze registry.... argh. argh.. argh..

One can easily imagine:
cd <ELF-FILE>
ls
...segment 1
....segment 2

> > kword and staroffice already do this -
>
> They do? Explain please.

Staroffice's file formats are zipped directorys of xml files, according to
another post on this ML, so too are kword.   Java jars are zipped directory
trees. See a pattern?

> Arghhh. False hits on a large system are BAD!

Of course they are.  no hits are worse.  You can progressively narrow
down too many hits, as you yourself illustrated, since the earlier searches
can provide context for narrowing your search. Starting from no hits and
trying to work your way up is something most people find harder, since
you don't have context...

i.e. at least you _can_ get a result back.   People in general don't know
exactly what they want.  If they did, we probably wouldn't need DNS, let
alone search engines.

 With a traditional filesystem or relational db,
you either have to know exactly what you want, or, use, from a compsci
perspective, inefficient post-facto searches like the "find" command,
or periodic indexing, like the "slocate" command (which itself seems to
be left out of the default install of some new distros for some benighted
reason...)