An idea for integrating Unix filesystem and GUI

[Brenden T.]

Guido Draheim wrote:

 > Frankly, it's a short sighted attempt.

Well, no.  It's a first attempt.  He has a good idea and it needs some 
polish and discussion before it can be truly workable for a large number 
of people.

My target is not Microsoft here.  Imitating them isn't always the best 
thing to do.  They have had far more spectacular failures over the years 
than successes, and I don't believe that blind imitation is a good 
idea.  My concern is solely for the OS desktop itself.

Microsoft's idea of making the file system into a database is risky.  
Users might not like it.  Novices can have a very hard time 
understanding and maintaining databases.  What if I put something into 
it and then can't remember the attributes needed to retrieve it?  I'll 
come looking for the programmer with a bat, that's for sure.

James' idea is simple and already familiar to most users.  It's closer 
to Apple's scheme as far as I can tell, and Apple traditionally does 
very good computer-human interfaces.  This would make a nice back up 
plan to any grandiose everything-is-a-database plan.  If Microsoft's big 
plan fails, they still have a pretty decent file browser to fall back 
on.  I don't see that OS has the same fall back capability.  It would be 
good to not abandon working technology until the replacement is proven 
in the field and well accepted by all users.

I'd say let people work on it if they feel the have the time, it can't 
hurt, and it might be very useful in the long run.

My 2 cents.