Re: ioctls for gnome-vfs

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Tue, 19 Nov 2002, Jody Goldberg wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 02:47:42PM -0500, Alexander Larsson wrote:
> > 
> > I don't see why it is more useful than a libid3 for a mp3 player and 
> > libgsf for Word documents. Both of those libraries are much better suited 
> > to the corresponding app than a generic tags library.
> 
> while I agree there is line to be drawn.  gnome-vfs has a handler
> for tar files.  By this logic it might be better to move it into gsf
> with zip and ole.  Do we want to keep format implementation in other
> libraries ?

Yes, there is a degree of overlap here that is not obvious. I would argue 
that any format that is mostly a file storage, and typically used directly 
by users in their day-to-day file handling should be handled by gnome-vfs. 
Therefore I consider it ok for gnome-vfs to have read-only handling of 
tar, compressed tar and zip files. (And also possilby rar-files and iso 
images.)

On the other hand, I'd like a library like gsf to handle zipfiles too, 
because they are used for some file-formats that are typically handled 
by programs instead of users (as cointainers for compound docs etc). But I 
think the API for this access would be different than the ones for 
gnome-vfs, since it would typically be used differently. (e.g. the API has 
to be much more explicit about memory and buffer handling.)

-- 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl redhat com    alla lysator liu se 
He's a gun-slinging guerilla dog-catcher with a mysterious suitcase handcuffed 
to his arm. She's a blind psychic schoolgirl from a secret island of warrior 
women. They fight crime!