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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.ysu.edu!odin.oar.net!malgudi.oar.net!news.sprintlink.net!new-news.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!news.frontiernet.net!news.his.com!news2.cais.net!news.cais.net!news.cais.com!news From: Eric Vought <adfh@ids2.idsonline.com> Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Ideal filesystem Date: Fri, 22 Mar 1996 15:25:42 -0500 Organization: Capital Area Internet Service info@cais.com 703-448-4470 Lines: 30 Message-ID: <31530CC6.266C03EF@ids2.idsonline.com> References: <4gejrb$ogj@floyd.sw.oz.au> <3140C968.20699696@netcom.com> <4ia7im$i4m@usenet.srv.cis.pitt.edu> <4if9gb$4kh@park.uvsc.edu> <4iibd2$ng@EARTH.baylor.edu> <4ir7tc$5uf@park.uvsc.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: ip198.idsonline.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.0 (X11; I; Linux 1.2.13 i486) Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.development.system:20547 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:16532 > > ] >2) Desktop position information for an icon > ] > ] This is not good for a multi-user environment. No two users will want > ] icons in the same place. > > This is not a good argument. One could just as easily have an > attribute per user. This *is* a good argument. Per-user attributes go in user owned space. Per file attributes go in system owned space. Put user information in the user's home directory, not attached to a file. Attaching per-user attributes to files causes problems with deleting or editing user accounts. In order to get rid of user "joe", the system now has to scan all files for per-user information and delete those entries pertaining to joe. This problem already exists to some extent with files that are owned by that user, but these are often limited to the user's home directory, a spool file, and possibly a public sticky directory. Your suggestion makes the mess more widespread and more complicated. Icon information is also potentially per-user. For instance, take a text editor, "joe". Joe is a text based, non-graphical editor. Some people may very well want to map it to an icon. Others, particularly those who don't have an X connection, will not. Additionally, even X-only programs may have problems. I may not like so-and-so's choice of an icon and may want to use my own. A better solution would be to use a resource file to specify the icon. On installation, the program can use its default option, but this can be overidden in user space.