[tahoe-dev] up with filesystems! up with the web!

James A. Donald jamesd at echeque.com
Fri Jan 1 20:21:07 PST 2010


Chimpy McSimian IV, Esq. wrote:
> > If anything, it sounds like you should stick with exposing a tree
> > structure to users.

David-Sarah Hopwood wrote:
> This would be incompatible with supporting fine-grained sharing

Sharing is typically browsing.  Browsing arbitrary graphs is fine.

Manipulating arbitrary graphs is not fine.

Most manipulation tools should manipulate a tree.  If a tree is being 
manipulated, then what is displayed to be manipulated, or as the results 
of manipulation, must also be a tree.

Windows explorer (a browse and tree manipulation tool) displays three 
kinds of things in a directory:  Folders, shortcuts, and files.

Shortcuts and folders form an arbitrary graph, folders form a tree, 
files are leaf nodes of the current folder.  When manipulating, 
shortcuts are treated as leaves, so one always manipulates a tree, even 
though one browses an arbitrary graph.



More information about the tahoe-dev mailing list