O/T: Nibbling on an Apple

On Tue, 06 Aug 2013 23:51:48 -0400, nospam
wrote:

In article , Eric Stevens
wrote:

file systems are old school. they're eventually going away for nearly
all users. system administrators or developers might need to get at
individual files, but typical users do not.

Crap.

You couldn't find your way round my wife's iPad collection of of
photographs unless there was a file system you could follow.
Otherwise, god knows how many thousands of photographs all in one big
heap.

Mine are in albums on my iPad. Is that not a file system?

no. it's a higher level concept.

it's actually a database indexed by content, not a rigid file/folder
structure. one photo can be in multiple albums, something not possible
with a file system.

You can't do any of these things without a file system.

internally there is a file system but it's not exposed to the user nor
does it need to be.

Then what does the user think the 'apps' are doing for them?

The user has to visualise the files (photographs) organised in some
fashion or another. The nuts and bolts of how it is done is
immateriel. The files are organised in a file system which the user
has to manipulate through whatever interface software has been
inflicted on them.

direct access to the file system is archaic and primitive. it's not
necessary anymore. there are much better ways to do stuff.
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

In article 2013080622160619790-savageduck1@REMOVESPAMmecom,
Savageduck wrote:

So far, the only thing I'm interested in
doing is having a portable way of displaying my images.

I use the Photo Transfer App & Dropbox to move prepared images from my
desktop to my iPad albums for display.

You ight want to take a look at an app called "Unbound". It's a photo
display app that connects to your Dropbox and you can make specific
folders available offline, so it syncs the folders to the app (i.e. not
to the iPad photo app) and is available offline. Less manual work and
you can manage the content of the folders on your computer and then sync
to your iPad.

I have my entire portfolio set up this way. I have a script on my server
that packages all the image files from my online portfolio:

http://sandman.net/archive/index.php

Into appropriate folders, then I sync that with my FTP client to a
Dropbox folder which is then synced to the iPad with Unbound.


--
Sandman[.net]

On Tue, 06 Aug 2013 23:51:47 -0400, nospam
wrote:

In article , Eric Stevens
wrote:

Mine are in albums on my iPad. Is that not a file system?

Exactly - but nospam doesn't seem to realise that.

it's not a file system. it's a database.

The database won't work without a file system.
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

On Tue, 06 Aug 2013 23:51:50 -0400, nospam
wrote:

In article , Eric Stevens
wrote:

file systems are old school. they're eventually going away for nearly
all users. system administrators or developers might need to get at
individual files, but typical users do not.

Crap.

definitely not crap. it's progress and can't happen soon enough. file
system access is primitive.

It's your original statement that is crap.

not at all. there's nothing crap about it. it's reality and is
happening *now*, although far too slowly.

You couldn't find your way round my wife's iPad collection of of
photographs unless there was a file system you could follow.
Otherwise, god knows how many thousands of photographs all in one big
heap.

then she's not taking advantage of all of its functionality.

How can you possibly know that?

because you said she has multiple thousands of photos in one big heap.

Go back and read again. I said that without a file system she has
mutiple photographs in one big heap.

that means she hasn't made any albums and has them in one giant album.

if she has them in multiple albums, then they aren't in 'one big heap.'

i can only go by what you say, assuming you don't change your story.

you don't need direct file system access to manage photos. far from it.
the computer can do that *for* you.

Twisting. Shifting the goal posts. The question is not whether you
have "direct file system access" but whether or not you have a "file
system".

i'm not twisting a thing and that's *not* the question. it's clear you
don't understand this any more than tony does.

what goes on under the hood is unimportant to the vast majority of
users.

there is a tiny subset who might need to do that, such as a sysadmin or
software developer, but not the typical user.

faces and places automatically groups photos by who is in them and
where they were taken, or the photos can be put into one or more
albums, something that can't be done with a filesystem.

Weasel! You are describing what it is that the file system doe.

nope. the file system cannot do faces and places, nor can it have one
file in more than one place. that requires a higher level database.

you're as confused as tony is.

ios 7 also has another way to look at large numbers of photos and
quickly figure out which ones are the ones you want to look at, but
it's not out yet.

... and it will keep track of them with table of random numbers?

Naah. It's got a file system.

it does *internally*, but you don't need to access it. it can all be
managed in far better and more efficient ways.

you don't know which block a file is on the hard drive, do you? no.

Yes.

same for files. in fact, the location on the hard drive can change
since modern operating systems relocate commonly used files for speed.
all of that is done *for* you.
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

In article ,
Eric Stevens wrote:

internally there is a file system but it's not exposed to the user nor
does it need to be.

Then what does the user think the 'apps' are doing for them?

The user has to visualise the files (photographs) organised in some
fashion or another. The nuts and bolts of how it is done is
immateriel. The files are organised in a file system which the user
has to manipulate through whatever interface software has been
inflicted on them.

No, the user never ever manipulate the file system in an iPad. When you
arrange your photos in albums the photo files remain stationary in their
original folder but a database entry is created or altered to reflect
your manipulation.

Think of it as "sets" on flickr.com, where you, the user, obviously
doesn't have access to manipulate the bits on the hard drive pertaining
to the actual photos. But you can use their web interface to manipulate
the database that holds information about your photos. That's why one
photo can be in many sets, and if you edit the photo, it's updated in
all the sets. That's not because the file has been copied to folders
with the name of your sets and some background process is re-copying the
file when you've edited it. No, it's because you haven't changed
anything as far as the file system goes - only the information in the
database.

The iPad Photo app works exactly the same way. Or the Music app.


--
Sandman[.net]

In article ,
Eric Stevens wrote:

Mine are in albums on my iPad. Is that not a file system?

Exactly - but nospam doesn't seem to realise that.

it's not a file system. it's a database.

The database won't work without a file system.

Actually it could, but in the case of the iPad, it doesn't. It is true
that the database itself is a file in the filesystem, but the albums you
create and the organization you do with your photos on the iPad doesn't
affect the file system in any shape or form, contrary to what Tony
incorrectly thought. It is all done in the database that is the source
of what you see on screen.


--
Sandman[.net]

In article ,
Eric Stevens wrote:

because you said she has multiple thousands of photos in one big heap.

Go back and read again. I said that without a file system she has
mutiple photographs in one big heap.

Yes, nospam did misread. But the fact is that WITH the filesystem the
photos are very much kept in a huge heap. Yes, it is somewhat
automatically separated into folders under /var/mobile/Media/Photos, but
without the database and the albums, that would indeed be considered a
"huge heap" of photos that would be totally unmanageable to the end
user. Hence why there is a database in between the user and the file
system where he or she can easily manage and organize the photos in any
way she pleases without worrying about the actual files.





--
Sandman[.net]

In article , Eric Stevens
wrote:

file systems are old school. they're eventually going away for nearly
all users. system administrators or developers might need to get at
individual files, but typical users do not.

Crap.

You couldn't find your way round my wife's iPad collection of of
photographs unless there was a file system you could follow.
Otherwise, god knows how many thousands of photographs all in one big
heap.

Mine are in albums on my iPad. Is that not a file system?

no. it's a higher level concept.

it's actually a database indexed by content, not a rigid file/folder
structure. one photo can be in multiple albums, something not possible
with a file system.

You can't do any of these things without a file system.

internally there is a file system but it's not exposed to the user nor
does it need to be.

Then what does the user think the 'apps' are doing for them?

accessing content. what goes on under the hood is irrelevant.

The user has to visualise the files (photographs) organised in some
fashion or another. The nuts and bolts of how it is done is
immateriel.

exactly my point.

users don't care how it's organized internally or if it's even on the
device itself. it could be on a server or in the cloud.

they just want to access the photos, music or whatever else they want
to do. the computer takes care of the rest.

The files are organised in a file system which the user
has to manipulate through whatever interface software has been
inflicted on them.

that interface is at a higher level than the file system itself and can
do a whole lot more.

these days, people have hundreds of thousands of photos, music, movies,
emails, etc. and trying to manually keep track of all of that is
insanity.

In article , Eric Stevens
wrote:

Mine are in albums on my iPad. Is that not a file system?

Exactly - but nospam doesn't seem to realise that.

it's not a file system. it's a database.

The database won't work without a file system.

sure it can, but that's not the point.

the point is that the user doesn't need to interact with the file
system anymore. there are much *better* ways to do what they want to
do.

users want to access *content*. where that content is does not matter.
it might not even be on their device.

In article , Eric Stevens
wrote:

You couldn't find your way round my wife's iPad collection of of
photographs unless there was a file system you could follow.
Otherwise, god knows how many thousands of photographs all in one big
heap.

then she's not taking advantage of all of its functionality.

How can you possibly know that?

because you said she has multiple thousands of photos in one big heap.

Go back and read again. I said that without a file system she has
mutiple photographs in one big heap.

go back and read what i wrote again. the files are only in a big heap
if she puts them in a big heap. she doesn't need file system access to
sort and organize photos.

you don't know which block a file is on the hard drive, do you? no.

Yes.

bull**** you do.

the only way you'd know that is if you manually run a utility that maps
it out, and even if you did that, why would you even care?

it's not going to make a task any easier. you don't tell the computer
'give me data at blocks 12345 and 43444'. you tell the computer, you
want to edit a certain photo and *it* figures out what files to access
on the hard drive, which is passed to the disk controller which figures
out which blocks to read.

and as i said, the blocks a file is on can and does change all the
time. just because a file is on a given block now doesn't mean it's
going to be in the same block later today or next week.