Re: updates?

[Justin Sher <justin ndst com>]

On Mon, 9 Mar 1998, Sergey I. Panov wrote:

> > They are built into OS/2, VMS, and WindowsNT (hpfs anyway, not sure
> > about ntfs).  OS/2 uses them extensively in its workplace shell.
> > For unix, they'd be added at the VFS level (visible as separate
> > files in the real file system): For example, I might have ./Foo.txt
> > with its EAs in ./.EAs/Foo.txt.
> 
>  I was under impression that ext2fs can support EA, it is just that
> nobody is using them. An the reason is portability across UNIXes. In
> the beginning of the KDE project they disscussed possibility of using
> EA in ext2fs but did not go for it for the reason mentioned above.
> I guess one may use filesystem EA and still be portable -- e.g. fail
> back to storing EA in hidden files if FS does not support them.
> 
>  Sergey
> 
	Yeah IMHO Ea is not that great of an idea because when you copy
files in the shell they get tend to get messed up in the GUI.  It's also a
major hassle having lots of hidden directories.  It makes duplicating and
managing directories in the shell more annoying.  I would say just do
things by file extension for right now or failing that magic numbers.  EAs
are one feature too many for right now. 
	I'm not exactly sure if this is going to be the case with Midnight
Commander, but I feel that sometimes interface concepts that were great in
the shell are not always as good in an X Window Manager.  For instance, I
think that having split screened apps was a good idea in the shell, were
space was limited and it wasn't easy to draw ascii art windows, however, I
think that it's better to have multiple overlapping windows in X.  This
way the user can much more easily use the mouse or Cntrl-Tab to select
among different work environments. IMHO, I like using XEmacs with multiple
frames because if I want to see what buffers I have available and then
switch to one I don't have to go cntrl-x cntrl-b and then switch to that
buffer window and then type o and then switch to that window and then do
cntrl-0 everytime I want to look at a different file.  In XEmacs with
multiple frames I just look at the task bar in kde and click on the file I
want.  To switch around takes about 1 second while it can take ten times
as long if I'm just using multiple panes.  I'm sure you could program your
own macros to do this and that but GNOME is for the average or novice user
too.
	Lastly, why not just use most of the existing user interface
concepts but allow for apis to allow for different user interfaces to
access some of the higher level gnome services in the future.  That way
when better UIs come along they can be plugged right in.  I think that
trying to invent a whole new GUI paradigm is probably more work than is
necessary.  Just my 2 cents..