Inspirational Technology

Panther and BeFS

Now this could be the biggest productivity boost of all. I would absolutely love to see a more BeFS like file system in Mac OS X. There is so much power that can be brought out when the file system is more database like. It enables all kinds of applications that require tons of extra software currently. For instance much of the functionality of iTunes could be built directly on top of the file system rather then using a separate database. This doesn't mean that iTunes would be replaced by the Finder, it just means the implementation of these meta-data heavy applications would be considerably simplified.

The problem of course is portability of the meta-data. It would bring back the whole resource fork problem where you have to specially handle files that move across platforms. That is definitely not a good thing. Because of this what I'd also like to see is an open XML based format for the transfer of files along with their meta-data. It still means special handling, but at least it would be in a format that would actually be useful someplace other then on a Mac. Maybe a bundle format (i.e. a directory) with the file in its usual form and the metadata in a separate file. For transfer simply zipping it up would work and then PC users could just unzip it and access the file inside or use the meta-data for what ever.