From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <4ca56e32db6b4e683bf27ea2241dfc2c@9netics.com>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] everything is a directory
Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2007 21:11:56 -0700
From: Skip Tavakkolian <9nut@9netics.com>
In-Reply-To: <d846ee8c0708161237j1647f361kbc1d3af0a831d0cb@mail.gmail.com>
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if the goal of the extra metadata is to somehow help in the selection
of the data (i.e.  file), then something like what abhey presented at
iwp9 will fit the problem.

http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/sources/contrib/iwp9-2006/papers/abheyshahplan9.pdf

> I'm confused. Is it the concept that's awful, or the implimentation? Is the
> problem that visibiliby of the attributes to tools is inconsistant and
> they're managed with entirely different symantics? Or is the whole idea of
> arbitrary file attributes a tool of the devil?
> 
> Certainly, some file formats (I'm thinking of MP3) use file attributes to
> great effect, though of course they're specially implemented in the context
> of the files' use case. Is it appropriate to implement a general file
> tagging capability that is file independant and managed by the OS?