Re: Adding new functionality to the VFS

[Mikael Hallendal <micke imendio com>]

Yaron Tausky wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-08-08 at 19:07 -0400, Rodney Dawes wrote:

Hi,

>>If it isn't a method of storage, why exactly should you be accessing it
>>as if it were? And if you are accessing as if it were, why would you
>>want to treat it significantly different than a normal storage volume?
>>
>>It seems to me that the proper way to "sync" with the device, would be
>>through a synchronization API like multisync or whatever it is called
>>now, rather than trying to make it act like a filesystem.
> 
> Think of it as a server offering an NFS share: it's a different
> computer, but it offers you access to its filesystem. You can
> communicate with it in other ways too (via HTTP, for example). The same
> goes here: there IS a special synchronization API, but sometimes a user
> wants to access the device's filesystem directly -- perhaps to transfer
> a new album or movie to it, or anything like that. The SynCE project
> provides a GnomeVFS module for accessing the device's file system
> (synce://), I'm merely talking about UI aesthetics here.

This is similar to what we've done for the Nokia 770 when pairing with a
mobile phone. When the phone is paired we add it as a Drive, and when
connected you "mount" it as a volume. This works out well and should
work well for your usecase as well imho.

What might be needed is another GnomeVFSDeviceType that maps better to
this kind of device. We added GNOME_VFS_DEVICE_TYPE_BLUETOOTH,
GNOME_VFS_DEVICE_TYPE_OBEX_FTP to the Nokia GnomeVFS version.

Best Regards,
  Mikael Hallendal

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