From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <d846ee8c0708161237j1647f361kbc1d3af0a831d0cb@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2007 15:37:53 -0400
From: "Robert Sherwood" <robert.sherwood@gmail.com>
To: "Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs" <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Subject: Re: [9fans] everything is a directory
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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?

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<div>I&#39;m confused. Is it the concept that&#39;s awful, or the implimentation? Is the problem that visibiliby of the attributes to tools is inconsistant and they&#39;re managed with entirely different symantics? Or is the whole idea of arbitrary file attributes a tool of the devil?
</div>
<div>&nbsp;</div>
<div>Certainly, some file formats (I&#39;m thinking of MP3) use file attributes to great effect, though of course they&#39;re specially implemented in the context of the files&#39; use case. Is it appropriate to implement a general file tagging capability that is file independant and managed by the OS?
</div>

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