[Oberon] Files - search | Edit

[Alexander Hofmann]

First of all, thank you for the "background".

easlab at absamail.co.za wrote:

> On Sun, 16 Nov 2003 Alexander wrote:  
>
>> Is it possible to change the Length of Filenames to more than 32 
>> chars? Hence the Aos-FS doesn't support directories, it would be good 
>> if one could manage his files by "emulating" directories with dots.
>>   
>
>
> Well, the 32 char length is a very fundamental attribute of n-o (Aos-FS);
> a bit like ten-fingures. Perhaps any change would be catastrophic ?
> The next size would be 64. Consider that 80 and 72 (email)  are 
> standard line widths.
> And then there's the extra chars for the partition ID eg:
>  NoDocm:Chapter3.Text
> Have you got partitons in Aos-FS ?
>
You're right. I've never thought about that before.
I just asked about something like directories because I'm more familar 
in using Windows with it's well grouped files in directories. But there 
a definetly other posibilities for grouping and organizing files.
You namend the possibility of Partitions. I didn't think about that, 
either. This helps me a lot.

Nevertheless I like the statement of  Christoph Kuhn:

> First of all: Files are something for the operating system - not for 
> the user.
>  
>
I think this is right. Fore example writing a text, giving the text an 
icon and ataching two images to it could produce three files in the 
meaning of File-System-Entries (text, icon and an XML-File, for example, 
with contains information about "filename", autor etc), and one file for 
the user (by viewing the partition with the "filemanager"). The user 
would see his Text with the associated icon in the Goup "Texts", and not 
all the files with could be irritating.
One could combine this with the use of several partitions and would have 
grouped documents, too.
I'll think about that.

Again, thanks for the background,
   Alexander.