file attributes

[Lyndon Nerenberg]

erik at srava.sra.co.jp (Erik M. van der Poel) writes:

>If you put the metadata for several files in one file called .desktop
>or whatever, the program that reads this data will be more complex. 
>Please remember the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, <censored>).

You're trying to tell me that changing the semantics of the filesystem,
and implementing new system calls to deal with that is SIMPLER than
writing a couple of C callable library routines? Yow!

>If you have a file called .desktop or whatever that contains the
>metadata, where do you put the metametadata for this metadata .desktop
>file? It would be cleaner to hide the metadata from open().

What sort of metadata would be required for .desktop?

-- 
    Lyndon Nerenberg  VE6BBM / Computing Services / Athabasca University
           atha!cs.athabascau.ca!lyndon || lyndon at cs.athabascau.ca
                    Packet: ve6bbm at ve6mc.ab.can.noam
        As a math atheist, I should be excused from this.   --Calvin