RE: Nautilus, metadata and extendet attributes

[Olaf Frączyk <olaf cbk poznan pl>]

On Tue, 2004-01-27 at 09:32, raphael bosshard slm admin ch wrote:
> Not only did I try reading the debate, I even think I understand most of it.
> 
> As far I understand the main concern against extended attributes is based in
> the idea that reading them is slow. While this may be true ( And I am not
> sure if this statement is true. As far as I know, EAs are cached. Some more
> information anyone?) it is definitely faster than sniffing the content of
> the file and try to match it against some regexes (This may be a bit
> oversimplyfied.) and its also more secure than the so called "file
> extension". As I wrote; there is more effort involved to change a file
> attribute. I has to happen on intentionaly.
Why do you think it is faster? The slowest thing is to open a file for
sniffing. The sniffing itself is not so slow. About the same delay
should be for accessing EA. BTW., there are other problems like
permissions etc.
And this what I wrote above was already discussed on the list.
> 
> The funny part is, that even Microsoft knows, that "file extensions" are a
> bad solution. They try to hide them ("Do not show extensions of know file
> types") and, by doing so, create some kind of a pseudo-attribute but without
> any clear concept. Let`s not do the same mistake they did some twenty years
> ago.
The biggest mistake is to hide these extensions. If they are shown, then
you see blabla.doc.pif if they are hidden you see blabla.doc. Nothing
more to say.

Regards,

Olaf