Re: File dialogs: Network access

[Dylan Griffiths <Dylan_G bigfoot com>]

> > Thank you, second voice of reason.  I've said before I'm against adding FTP
> > support, etc, to a common file dialog because it's fundamentally the Wrong
> > Place for it.  You say Gnome VFS should handle it, and I think that's an
> > interesting solution.  However, I think it'd be better if we just put hooks
> > for it in the kernel and had a userland daemom for the specifics of the
> > connection and population of the vfs (like of how userland NFS works).  The
> > true VFS is the proper place as it guarantees a consistent view to all
> > programs.  But then it's a linux-kernel discussion..
> 
> Please remember that GNOME isn't, and shouldn't be, tied just to Linux.
> *BSD, HP-UX, and Solaris should be able to run it too... ;-)
> 
> I vote for the gnome-vfs (http://developer.gnome.org/arch/file/vfs.html,
> but very outdated,
> http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/934991555/index_html, exactly one year
> old).
> I'm not a programmer, so please correct me if I'm way wrong.

These are mutually exclusive goals: consistent interface, and portability. 
At least in the way you present it.

It is fundamentally impossible for you to make this policy decsision here
and have it be helpful.  If we stuck to the OS VFS, we don't DoRRD the code,
and we provide a consistent interface.  Having Yet Another Abstraction Layer
will lead to inconsistencies at best, and a performance problem at worst.

I think we shouldn't be bending over backwards to provide an inconsistent
interface, when the OS designers can add the appropriate hooks for the
user-land programmers to implement user space FS handlers.

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