On Monday 20 May 2002 03:41, Friedrich W. H. Kossebau wrote:

> Please forgive me thinking of implementation. I'm trying (stress on
> trying) to prepare an implementation so I always have this aspect in
> mind and am curious how others would do it :)

One other thing that occurred to me while I was sleeping...

While I agree with Steven that the directory is far too useful a concept to 
discard, who says that I should be locked into *just one* directory 
structure? I might want to present the filesystem the traditional way (in 
what I'd call a "natural" directory structure), but I might also want to 
present it in any of a number of programmatically determined hierarchies.

For instance, using recipes as an example... I might want to present the 
documents grouped by ingredient, by ethnicity, OR by the appropriate wine 
that goes with it. The same file might appear in more than one place if 
appropriate (just as we currently use links). Project documentaton could be 
displayed by system, by language, by project owner, etc. Right now I have no 
idea how the user might choose from among these, but it's something that 
becomes possible when you think in terms of a database, and consider the 
directory as metadata.

-- 
Dave Leigh, Consulting Systems Analyst
Cratchit.org
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