Re: [9fans] Different representations of the same

[Roman V Shaposhnik <rvs@sun.com>]

On Thu, 2009-06-11 at 06:49 +0200, lucio@proxima.alt.za wrote:
> > but at that point it becomes no more appealing than the content
> > negotiation techniques of HTTP.
>
> I thought you might want a "ctl" file into which you write the
> representation you want and that magically creates a new file or
> directory.

Sure, but if *each* file can have more than one representation then
where's the best place for the ctl thing to be? In each subdirectory?
At the top of the hierarchy (accepting the full path names, of course)?

>  Or use a "clone" style protocol which is more suitable for
> the automatic creation of new entities.

"clone" doesn't quite work for me in REST world (not that it can't
be made to work, it is just complicated).

> Of course, you may specifically want to go for a totally different
> approach, in which case I plead guilty to not understanding the exact
> nature of the solution you're seeking.

I'm simply asking for the best practices. Also, as I admitted in
my original email, I'm not really implementing this in 9P. So I
have an option that is native to the protocol I'm using: content
negotiation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_negotiation)

Now, since 9P doesn't have that I was simply wondering what would
be the agreed upon wisdom to have the same functionality
_cleanly_ implemented in a 9P based synthetic filesystem.

Thanks,
Roman.