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Okay, sure, this came up through Slashdot, but it's interesting and
connects to a number of XML issues.
http://cda.mrs.umn.edu/~mine0057/fs.pdf
"The filesystem is a database, but it has always been unsuitable as the
computer's primary one. Programmers have to write specialized programs
to get the functionality they need. Now, new advances in software like
Plan 9, the Reiser 4 filesystem and Linux are making the improvements
the filesystem needs to become viable. Plan 9 is using the filesystem
as the integral system interface, and the Reiser filesystem is unifying
pointlessly different but equivalent namespaces. For operating systems
to improve for users (that always includes programmers), they need to
incorporate these new ideas."
The bit that particularly caught my eye was this:
"This is nice progress. All the functionality GConf needs the
filesystem provides, which eliminates the need to install the GConf
program and the required XML libraries."
Filesystems with child structures are presented as an alternative to
files with attributes, which is an interesting parallel to elements with
child elements as an alternative to elements with attributes.
It also reminded me of conversation last week (Gabe Beged-Dov, are you
still on this list?) about the interesting possibilities of using URLs
as locators with decomposable structures rather than monolithic
identifiers.
Cool stuff, well worth thinking about, even though it isn't directly
XML.
--
Simon St.Laurent
Ring around the content, a pocket full of brackets
Errors, errors, all fall down!
http://simonstl.com -- http://monasticxml.org
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