EFS and gnome/kde (was Re: Request: Test suite for EFS.)

[bob thestuff net]

I have talked to a kde developer today and efs was mentioned. The kde guys
would be very interested in discusing this. A unified gnome/kde file
format would go along way. They will be in gnome-kde@gnome.org. Anyone
interested should meet there.

On Wed, 23 Feb 2000, Warren Young wrote:

> Ian McKellar wrote:
> > 
> > On Mon, Feb 21, 2000 at 01:27:43PM +0000, u07ih@abdn.ac.uk wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Remember: Users don't care about files - they care about documents. So long as
> > > > they can treat their documents as distinct entities they'll be happy.
> > >
> > > And directories are not distinct entities on a commandline. If we have told a
> > > user that their document is a single file in the filemanager (because the FM
> > > handles it as one), when they get to the commandline they're going to try to do
> > > cp myfile.doc /mnt/zip and it's not going to work.
> > 
> > "cp -R myfile.doc /mnt/zip" will work.
> 
> That's an exception, and exceptions are bad in UI design.
> 
> Take, say, StarOffice's spreadsheet vs. an EFS-enabled Gnumeric: in one,
> copying a document is the same as copying a file, but in the other, it's
> like copying a directory.  Or even better: someone (gasp) runs KDE's
> file manager alongside GNOME's and sees two different structures.
> 
> This isn't an argument against making EFS store its contents in a
> directory.  It's that, if we choose to put the document in a special
> directory, it still needs to look like a directory.  If you buy that
> argument, I it follows that EFS-as-directory isn't that great.
> 
> Let's not forget that GMC already has the ability to peek inside
> compound files like tar files.  There's absolutely no reason why
> Nautilus couldn't make an EFS file _look like a directory_.  When you
> peek inside a tar file, it's obvious you're dealing with a file, but
> using the tool to peek inside it.
> -- 
> = Warren -- ICBM Address: 36.8274040 N, 108.0204086 W, alt. 1714m
> 
> 
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