Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: give us a hand with arch

[Florian Weimer]

On Sun, Sep 28, 2003 at 12:12:49PM +0200, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:

> The proof this is metadata, is that if you had any second channel in the
> inode where you could store your metadata (some other projects asked for
> this feature over time), you would be using it already instead of
> polluting the file (IMHO at least ;). That way (with kernel support for
> transparently adding metadata to a file) the explicit mode also wouldn't
> require you to add-tag/delete-tag/move-tag, and tagline would be totally
> obsoleted.

Distributing files together with their extended attributes, a resource
fork or other ways to transparently store metadate is rather painful.
Ask any MacOS user. 8-/

You can either preserve the metadata, or you can make the file contents
accessible to traditional users.  Both things at the same time don't
work.