Re: Plans for gnome-vfs replacement

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Tue, 2006-09-19 at 16:25 +0200, Xavier Bestel wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-09-19 at 16:17, Alexander Larsson wrote:
> > On Tue, 2006-09-19 at 16:14 +0200, Xavier Bestel wrote:
> > > On Tue, 2006-09-19 at 14:54, Alexander Larsson wrote:
> > > > Lets take a step back and define the requirements we have:
> > > > 
> > > > We need to have a form of identifier for files. These come in two forms,
> > > > absolute and relative (e.g. name of a child to a folder). They must be
> > > > persistable (if we save a reference somewhere it must make sense on a
> > > > later login) and transportable (if we pass a reference via e.g. a
> > > > desktop link to another machine or another user it must make some sort
> > > > of sense). The exact contents of such identifiers have no special
> > > > requirements, in fact they could theoretically be binary blobs for all
> > > > users care, but it does seem nice if we could use something as close as
> > > > possible to filenames for local files.
> > > 
> > > In that case, would it be possible to have it only be built from
> > > conversion functions and not let applications know what's inside ?
> > > That way "implementation" can change ad-how.
> > 
> > I'm not sure what you mean. We can't change the identifier ever, because
> > that would break the persistable requirement.
> 
> Oh, yes I forgot.
> What I meant is, if you make the identifier format private, people will
> have less problems with conversions from/to display names.

This is the approach windows shell takes. Their paths are arrays of
{ short data_len; byte data[len] } ended by a double zero.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl redhat com    alla lysator liu se 
He's a short-sighted coffee-fuelled paramedic who hides his scarred face 
behind a mask. She's a pregnant thirtysomething nun with the power to see 
death. They fight crime!