Re: Terminology



On Tue, Apr 17, 2001 at 09:26:03AM +0100, Yuting Kuo wrote:
> In the real world, folders are things that contain other files, whilst
> directories are something you look into like a telephone directory. My
> point is the user will already be familiar with the concept "folder"
> from real world experience

I'm very suspicious of metaphors in computing. As regards the folder
metaphor in particular, the Unix filesystem really has very little in
common with real world folders. I've never encountered anything that I
thought of as a folder tree in the real world, nor have I ever
symlinked (let alone hard linked) between real-world folders, and I
don't have any real-world folders that I refer to as
/home/czr/foo/bar.

> and it would be easier to maintain
> consistency with the "Real world" than merely "Unix".

Easier for whom? It's very difficut (perhaps impossible) to maintain
consistency with the real world while providing a computer system that
actually does something useful. For example, being able to delete
things in a word processor is not consistent with the real world, but
we have it anyway because it's so useful.

colin

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