Re: Request: Test suite for EFS.

[Kent Schumacher <kent structural-wood com>]

Ian McKellar wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 20, 2000 at 02:24:04AM +0000, u07ih@abdn.ac.uk wrote:
> > > Why _must_ it be one file?
> >
> > See below.
> > >
> > > If you choose to store it in a directory rather than a file then you don't
> > > have to do this.
> >
> > A normal user makes a gnumeric spreadsheet with some images in it.
> > He expects there to be 1 file, after all, you have really created one document.
> > One document, one file.
> > And again, if it's a directory, how do you move the "file" from one place to
> > another? Making a tarball isn't exactly the most user friendly way to do it.
> >
> Drag and drop?
>
> GUI file management tools - both finder/explorer tools and FTP tools - handle
> directories intelligently. NeXTStep used directories for Applications -
> completely transparently for the user and the developer. That way they could
> store binaries for multible architectures and application resources under one
> logical location. If you're using the command line you use "cp -R", if you're
> using a GUI you drag and drop or whatever you use right now.
>
> EFS is effectively the same as a directory UI wise, speed wise, etc. The
> difference is that directories exist, work and have been used widely for many
> years.
>
> Remember: Users don't care about files - they care about documents. So long as
> they can treat their documents as distinct entities they'll be happy.
>
> Ian

This might be where the filesystem falls apart as a compound document architecture.
If you are navigating a directory tree to find your document, it is non-intuitive to a
user to suddenly select a directory as the document to load.

The filesystem's file name and attributes are probably not adequate to handle the demands
of a compound document either.

Kent