Re: EFS and gnome/kde (was Re: Request: Test suite for EFS.)

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs eazel com>]

Svanberg Liss <lisss@ydab.se> writes:

> > I have talked to a kde developer today and efs was mentioned. The kde guys
> > would be very interested in discusing this. A unified gnome/kde file
> > format would go along way. They will be in gnome-kde@gnome.org. Anyone
> > interested should meet there.
> <...>
> > > Let's not forget that GMC already has the ability to peek inside
> > > compound files like tar files.  There's absolutely no reason why
> <snip>
> 
> Would it be possible to use the tar format, instead of a special
> gnome/kde-file-in-a-filesystem format?
> Tar is standard, and will probably remain as a standard for compund files.
> 

EFS is better than the tar format because it allows efficient
read/write random access. If you want to modify a file in a tarball,
you have to essentially append a whole other copy to the end.

As long as there are good efs creation/extraction tools available
under an open source license, it shouldn't be much less portable than
`tar' ultimately.

 - Maciej