From owner-freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Feb 27 17:01:57 2013 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 61B3750E for ; Wed, 27 Feb 2013 17:01:57 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd-fs@m.gmane.org) Received: from plane.gmane.org (plane.gmane.org [80.91.229.3]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 19869ED2 for ; Wed, 27 Feb 2013 17:01:57 +0000 (UTC) Received: from list by plane.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1UAkOO-00021R-EL for freebsd-fs@freebsd.org; Wed, 27 Feb 2013 18:02:08 +0100 Received: from lara.cc.fer.hr ([161.53.72.113]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Wed, 27 Feb 2013 18:02:08 +0100 Received: from ivoras by lara.cc.fer.hr with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Wed, 27 Feb 2013 18:02:08 +0100 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ To: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org From: Ivan Voras Subject: Re: Some filesystem thoughts Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2013 18:01:27 +0100 Lines: 70 Message-ID: References: <51252372.1040001@o2.pl> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="------------enigF51AC19A28A4F755E7D2BDE5" X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: lara.cc.fer.hr User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; FreeBSD amd64; rv:14.0) Gecko/20120812 Thunderbird/14.0 In-Reply-To: <51252372.1040001@o2.pl> X-Enigmail-Version: 1.4.3 X-BeenThere: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Filesystems List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2013 17:01:57 -0000 This is an OpenPGP/MIME signed message (RFC 2440 and 3156) --------------enigF51AC19A28A4F755E7D2BDE5 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 20/02/2013 20:26, Radio m=C5=82odych bandyt=C3=B3w wrote: > The way I see it is not to treat files as streams of bytes. That's not > what they are, files have meanings and there are tools that bring them > out. A picture is a stored emotion. OK, there are no tools for that yet= =2E > But it is also an array of pixels. And a container with exif data. And > may be a container with an encrypted archive. And, a stream of bytes to= o. > They have multiple facets. > I think that it would be useful to somehow expose them to applications.= > Wouldn't it be useful to be able to grep through pdfs in your email > attachments? I think the problem is presentation - offering just the "grep" function is waste of effort since those using GUIs will generally not use grep. What you're talking about is something like google tried to do with android (and, probably, failed): a unified search interface across all applications and their data. Actually, modern smartphones & tablets are slowly moving into the direction that there are no "files" and no "filesystems" on your device, but rather jost your "data" and "apps" which both are managed by the system (and possibly reside in a "cloud"). It may be that the "hierarhical filesystem" idea has just not so useful or efficient any more (but OTOH, I don't see it going away any time soon). > Mass-edit music tags with sed? Manually edit with your favourite text > editor instead of the sucky one-liner provided by your favourite music > player? > How about video players being able to play videos by reading them in > decoded form directly from the filesystem instead of having to integrat= e > a significant number of complex libraries to provide sufficient format > coverage? All those things already exist (or will exist soon) in modern GUI desktop environments, and especially on handheld-enabled OSes. The way they are achieved is to introduce a Grand Unified Interface (or several of them, as it happens), which severly abstract the low-level libraries, even to the point where the (GUI) application doesn't know it's dealing with actual files or something completely different. If you're more concerned about the technical aspects, then learning to write filesystems in FUSE would be a good starting point for you. --------------enigF51AC19A28A4F755E7D2BDE5 Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" Content-Description: OpenPGP digital signature Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.19 (FreeBSD) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAlEuO+cACgkQ/QjVBj3/HSy6HgCfSt+PSRDWzubuIY4WdOyG1C+z VNcAniNDeHoT2gIk3w66cItjOh71Lg4f =xdTa -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --------------enigF51AC19A28A4F755E7D2BDE5--