Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!sri-unix!quintus!pds
From: pds@quintus.UUCP (Peter Schachte)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Ban the Cloud! (plus sugg. for Workbench)
Message-ID: <753@sandino.quintus.UUCP>
Date: 10 Mar 88 20:08:33 GMT
References: <8803090742.AA06118@cory.Berkeley.EDU>
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Mountain View, CA
Lines: 38
Summary: Ok, sounds good.  But how do you stop WB and DOS from diverging?

In article <8803090742.AA06118@cory.Berkeley.EDU>, dillon@CORY.BERKELEY.EDU (Matt Dillon) writes:
> >for DOS files and 
> >#! shell
> >...
> >workbench default tool, why invent another thing (assuming that we
> >have merged .icon files for time and space savings)? 
> 
> 	Because it doesn't have enough power!

Agreed.  I was kind of hoping CA would make it more powerful.

Ok, skipping the first line of the file would work.  It seems like a
good idea.  My hesitation in taking this approach is that it tends to
widen the gap between DOS and WB.  This discussion thread is about doing
just the opposite.

If there was a good way to put such a line at the top of a file other
than by the program that generated the file, or a text editor, this
would be good.  Remember, the file may not be ascii.  Worse yet, it may
have internal pointers that could be messed up by adding bytes to the
beginning of the file.  Yes, I know using relative pointers would solve
this problem, but we should be general here.

There are advantages to having this information outside the file.
Putting this info in the .info file doesn't have the problems I mention.
But then care must be taken to make sure this info follows the file
wherever it goes.  Putting it in the file would do this trivially, and
keeping it outside the file makes it harder.

It seems that all of this would be so much easier if AmigaDOS had a
facility for attaching arbitrary information to a file.  Then we
wouldn't need separate .info files.  Everything would be so much easier.
Implementation seems pretty easy.  Why didn't they do this?  What is
wrong with this idea?
-- 
-Peter Schachte
pds@quintus.uucp
...!sun!quintus!pds