Re: purpose for xmlfs improvment -GSoC application -

[Carl Fredrik Hammar]

Hi,

<olafBuddenhagen@gmx.net> writes:

> On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 02:34:26PM +0200, Carl Fredrik Hammar wrote:
>
>> One possibility would be to simply prefix the non-attribute nodes with
>> numbers, e.g.  `1 author', `2 title', `3 isbn'.  The problem here
>> is with insertion, because it would require renaming the following
>> nodes prior to this.
>> 
>> One way of tackling this would be to have a specifiable spacing
>> between the numbers, e.g.  `10 author', `20 title', `30 isbn'.  The
>> space will run out, but a command for re-spacing the existing nodes
>> would be fix this.
>
> I don't like the fixed spacing bit, but the idea is interesting, and
> made me think of something sligtly different: How about fractions? 2.1,
> 2.2, 2.1.1...

Wow, that even gets properly sorted by ls.  At least with ASCII's
collation, but it doesn't seem to work under unicode, which is
unfortunate.

Also, I can't help to think it will get annoying after three levels or
so.  Wouldn't it be easier to just up the spacing to, say 1000?

> These would be robust as long as the translator stays active. It would
> still change when restarting the translator though, which is problematic
> IMHO.

I don't see how the filenames can be persistent, without storing them
in a auxiliary file or worse, in a comment.  I think we have to accept
that they will change.  The question is when, before by renaming to
make room for an insertion, between restarts, or both.

But I can't come up with a good use-case for this, are you sure it's a
problem?

I don't think anybody actually wants to pretend an XML file is
anything like a real filesystem.  Something has got to give, and this
seems like a better candidate then easy insertions, moves and
deletions.

Regards,
  Fredrik