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SubjectRe: Capabilities
On Sat, May 22, 1999 at 07:14:27PM -0400, Kevin M. Bealer wrote:
> Bill Spitzak wrote:
> ...
> >
> >If in fact Linux goes with file-system capabilities, it seems to me
> >that this means that information that is only useful for executable
> >files is stored with *every* file (granted the likely implementation
> >will take no space). This would seem to imply that we should look
> >into a system where every file is executable.

Presumably only if the execute bits are set.

> >This would match the
> >Windoze or Mac idea where you can double-click anything and
> >(supposedly) it does something useful. Building the linking of what
> >running a file does into the system (well, probably the exec call in
> >the library) could make shell scripting much more powerful, and remove
> >the need for incompatable and complex code in the UI.

The binfmt_misc module pretty much does this already.

> In my experience, Windows doesn't really allow you to "execute" these
> files from the command line, per se. You have a file manager (explorer)
> which does a look up and determines which program to run on the file.
> This would be easy to do for linux, but is not a kernel issue.
>
> As for macintosh, I've never seen the command line interface, although
> I assume there is some emergency mode somewhere that has a prompt, so
> the GUI is the UI. It seemed to me (last time I used a Mac), that the
> "resource forks" must have the executable name in them somewhere.
> (Or maybe all of the data files start with "#!/bin/MacPaint" ......)

The resource fork contains multiple resources, each with a four byte
identifier code followed by an arbitrary number of bytes. Two of the
resources are the CREATOR (4 bytes) and TYPE fields (4 bytes). Every
CREATOR/TYPE field is unique, with Apple as the central registration
authority for all CREATOR fields (to prevent collisions).

For example, Microsoft Word documents are MSWD/WDBN. Microsoft Excel
spreadsheets are XCEL/XLS4. Microsoft Excel Macros are XCEL/XLM4.

Apple achieves all this by fiddling the filesystem (forked files and
some ugly format for the resource fork) and using their iron fist to
keep application developers in line. However it's not necessary (you
only access files through the GUI, so the filesystem could have been
stock standard UFS with two UFS files per "user" file).

KDE and GNOME are doing something similar, only their resource forks
are far more elegant (human readable, no forked filesystem).

--
Nathan Hand - Chirp Web Design - http://www.chirp.com.au/ - $e^{i\pi}+1 = 0$
Phone: +61 2 6230 1871 Fax: +61 2 6230 4455 E-mail: nathanh@chirp.com.au

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