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I think the clever bit is when a user sees their email in the file browser[1] they can mentally connect with that and start using their file system as the datab

by geocar 10y ago

I think the clever bit is when a user sees their email in the file browser[1] they can mentally connect with that and start using their file system as the database that it is, building their own dynamic todo list[2] that isn't managed by any application! Almost every filesystem "supports metadata", and while I agree that application support could be better, I think the real key is getting users to use that space themselves. [1]: https://birdhouse.org/beos/refugee/bemail.jpg https://birdhouse.org/beos/refugee/bemail.jpg [2]: https://birdhouse.org/beos/refugee/trackerbase.gif https://birdhouse.org/beos/refugee/trackerbase.gif

PeCaN 10y ago
BeFS's metadata support was much different from usual—it was a key/value map attached to each file. NTFS supports extended attributes and alternate data streams, which you could use to do the same thing, but none of the *nix filesystems have anything like that. What sort of metadata do you mean with “almost every filesystem ‘supports metadata’”?
- acdha 10y ago
  JFS, XFS, ReiserFS, ext3/4, and btrfs all support extended attributes – that's become a bigger deal for things like ACLs – but along with varying size limits the share the same limitations as NTFS, HFS+, etc. of not indexing those values. That means there's no way to do a query like "file type = audio/mp3" without either walking the filesystem or querying a separate index, which removes a lot of the benefits.
  - PeCaN 10y ago
    I think NTFS can index alternate data streams¹, but yeah, I agree no filesystems are on the level that BeFS was of easy querying and versatility. ¹ I am not sure about this, but https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa364404(v=vs.85).aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa3... seems to suggest it
    - acdha 10y ago
      I'm not sure either – it definitely did not in the past but I haven't needed to look into it for years. Things like WinFS were going to solve that the right way but since that never shipped I assume they were still relying on a bolt-on indexing service.

by geocar 10y ago

PeCaN 10y ago

BeFS's metadata support was much different from usual—it was a key/value map attached to each file. NTFS supports extended attributes and alternate data streams, which you could use to do the same thing, but none of the *nix filesystems have anything like that. What sort of metadata do you mean with “almost every filesystem ‘supports metadata’”?

acdha 10y ago
JFS, XFS, ReiserFS, ext3/4, and btrfs all support extended attributes – that's become a bigger deal for things like ACLs – but along with varying size limits the share the same limitations as NTFS, HFS+, etc. of not indexing those values. That means there's no way to do a query like "file type = audio/mp3" without either walking the filesystem or querying a separate index, which removes a lot of the benefits.
- PeCaN 10y ago
  I think NTFS can index alternate data streams¹, but yeah, I agree no filesystems are on the level that BeFS was of easy querying and versatility. ¹ I am not sure about this, but https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa364404(v=vs.85).aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa3... seems to suggest it
  - acdha 10y ago
    I'm not sure either – it definitely did not in the past but I haven't needed to look into it for years. Things like WinFS were going to solve that the right way but since that never shipped I assume they were still relying on a bolt-on indexing service.