Re: [Usability] Two proposals for file-selection

[Magnus Bergman <magnusbe algonet se>]

On Sat, 06 Mar 2004 11:39:21 -0700
Ryan McDougall <ryan mcdougall telusplanet net> wrote:

(snip)

> I think we all agree that a meta-data rich environment is the most
> desirable outcome. There are lots of projects with this goal in mind,
> such as medusa, and Seth's storage (yes the same guy who made the file
> chooser UI wants to add something like what you propose).

In case anybody has missed it: most modern file systems (like reiserfs
and ext3) has support for custom meta data. And Linux has of course
support for this. So any number of key-value pairs can be assigned to
any file on those file systems in Linux. But I guess most people would
want it reimplemented on a higher level so it works on less modern
platforms as well.

And then it comes to using a meta-data database for finding files (and
perhaps also store the files themselves in the database), this could for
example be implemented as a gnome-vfs module, and every program using
gnome-vfs could use it right away without modification.

I think this could all be added to gnome seamlessly in a few days. But
of course it would require a cool name, a trendy logo, a big hype and a
big fat library with whole new complex API for anybody to want it. ;)

> More dramatically microsoft's new OS will include system wide support
> for a meta-data database called WinFS implemented with a stripped down
> MS-SQL server
> 
> http://longhorn.msdn.microsoft.com/lhsdk/winfs/daovrwelcometowinfs.aspx
> 
> I have a friend at MS whose used it who claims its very cool.

After reading that I found it very cool that I have used more than half
of those features in different Linux based environments for years. In my
opinion, most problems that Microsoft are dealing with now have been
solved in unix many meny years ago, before windows was even though of.
Otherwise it seamed very similar to what LDAP does. Wonder if it's
really true that it contains the best file system, the best database
server and the best search engine yet created...