(Since the other message seems to have stuck in some queye, I'll just reply again here, although I should be replying to myself.)
tuomov wrote: > But having to use some arcane (numeric) identifiers for persistent > access to files instead of their paths drifts too much away from > unixland into WIMPland. The following quote explains the connection to WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Programs): > The see-and-point principle states that users interact with the computer > by pointing at the objects they can see on the screen. It's as if we have > thrown away a million years of evolution, lost our facility with > expressive language, and been reduced to pointing at objects in the > immediate environment. Mouse buttons and modifier keys give us a > vocabulary equivalent to a few different grunts. We have lost all the > power of language, and can no longer talk about objects that are not > immediately visible > > [D. Gentner and J. Nielsen: The Anti-Mac Interface, > http://www.acm.org/pubs/cacm/AUG96/antimac.htm] In a metadata DB FS, files don't have names that we can talk about. We can only search for them in various ways, and point at the found objects. -- Tuomo
