Am Samstag, den 26.05.2007, 02:23 -0400 schrieb Liam R E Quin: > > Using FAT32 for permanent storage is not recommended, and it's not used > > on a daily basis anymore, so we shouldn't consider that an argument > > against extended attributes. > "not used on a daily basis"? by anyone on the planet? I don't believe > you. :-)
We shouldn't write specs for everybody but for the vast majority, if it massively reduces implementation complexity. Of course, the USA could still use AM for audio broadcasting, and not using SI units in science would make it more simple for people who already know how to measure in knots, yards and gallons. Local file systems that do not support extended attributes should simply be considered legacy. Of course, there are also new file systems developed that don't have extended attributes, but they're either not targetting everyday computer use, or have no chance of being used by a big group of people (like Reiser4, pending Linux kernel inclusions for quite some years). See Wikipedia [1] for a list of common file systems, and see for yourself! Heck, most of them even those not supporting metadata don't even support file ownership (like FAT32, for the records). Command-line applications implementing our spec would have to implement INI file parsing, which is a no-no. Also, you can easily destroy the entire trash consistency using binutils, as the spec *requires* "(t)he $trash/info directory (to contain) an “information file” for every file and directory in $trash/files". Maybe you could name me a use-case where a file system that doesn't even support ownership (aka FAT32) can be used as something else as a top-level data dump, and hence would require sophisticated path restoring facilities? 8.3 filenames are so 1990. Note that even the first SSH protocol draft from 2001 includes extended attributes. We're approaching 2010, and while supporting file systems that are mostly of historical value is a good thing, we shouldn't care about new features for them. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems#Metadata [2] http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-secsh-filexfer-01 -- Christian Neumair <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> _______________________________________________ xdg mailing list [email protected] http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xdg
