Re: Request: Test suite for EFS.

[bob thestuff net]

Ok, question. Why do we need EFS at all? Can gnome-vfs not do what we
need? Haveing a second api seems alittle strange to me. Also, what file
system does efs use? If its not a standard file system, we could be in
trouble. UFS is rather common, maybe supporting that one would be best.
But, I dont really see why we have to have everything in a single file. A
single directory IMHO sounds like it would work fine, and would be easily
used by non gnome utilities.

 On Sat, 19 Feb 2000 u07ih@abdn.ac.uk wrote:

> > Why don't we just store compound documents as directories? The files
> > in this directory would be the individual components of this document.
> > If they themselves were compound documents they would, of course, be
> > subdirectories rather than files. 
> 
> This is what efs does, execpt it's only one file.
> 
> > We could always offer the option of storing the document as a (zipped)
> > tar archive, but this would lose the search capabilities that some
> > previous poster found desirable. In this case I would envisage untarring
> > the file when it is opened and re-tarring it when the document is finally
> > closed and unloaded from whatever application is being used to manipulate
> > it.
> 
> And what if one of the components is a 30meg mpg? Thats going to take one hell
> of a long time if you only want to change 3 lines in another file...
> untar
> change 3 lines
> retar.
> 
> The way efs does it is like a normal filesystem, execpt that filesystem is
> stored in a single file.
> You can open the file using efs_open,
> then you can open a file inside that compound file with efs_file_open, and then
> do editting on any of that file, and you don't need to rewrite the whole thing
> everytime. 
> 
> Plus, an efs module for gnome-vfs can be written (I've got a slight prototype of
> one) and we can go as far as to make a kernel module (ys...probably linux only
> but hey...) so you could do 
> mount -t gnome-efs /mnt/gnumeric ~/home/spreadsheet.gnumeric 
> and do standard cd /mnt/gnumeric; cp component1.jpg ~/
> or whatever you want.
> 
> iain
> 
> 
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