Re: Extended filesystem attributes support

>>>>> "François" == François Revol <[email protected]> writes:

François> Has anyone attempted to add attribute support to XEmacs already ?

I'm not aware of anything like this in the mainline development tree.  There's
a port around to Mac OS 9 which may have done something like this.  Have you
had a look at it?

François> Any comment ?

I'm not an expert in this area, but here a few thoughts of mine:

- I'm a strong believer that XEmacs should support the conventions of the
  system it is running on, so if there are attributes under BeOS that
  'everyone' writes, then XEmacs should too.

- However, I don't think that the attribute API should be exposed at the lisp
  level.

- How about each buffer having a property list that represents the attributes
  of the underlying file (we'll ignore file-less buffers for the moment)? When
  the buffer is saved, something like the existing saveconf.el can update the
  properties before it is written.

- The C code that does the save can to the conversion between the property
  list and the attribute types of the underlying OS and do the reverse on read.

- The property list should also be saved as an attribute (in lisp form) so
  that XEmacs-only attributes can be supported.

Malcolm


-- 
                     Malcolm Purvis <[email protected]>

Q: Why did the chicken cross the Mobius strip?
A: To get to the other... uh... err...