Metadata should be optional

[atai ece ucsd edu (Andy Tai)]

Metadata should be optional.  GNOME should be usable on top of the plain Unix 
file system.   Without special versions of shells, file I/O libraries, etc.

If GNOME does not require special window managers, it should not require 
special extensions to the OS.   People already get used to tell file information
by extensions.  Everything beyond that should be optional. 

If the basic c-shell cannot manipulate well GNOME-type data files, GNOME's 
usefulness would be limited to a much smaller audience.

If one cannot do some fancy things without extended file attributes, so what?
We have lived with the current Unix systems for a long time.

Simple is beautiful.

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