>>>>> "Robert" == Robert Elz <kre@munnari.OZ.AU> writes:

  Robert> I have this kind of less than half baked idea (so far anyway) to
  Robert> add "associated files" to inodes - that is, to allow a file to
  Robert> have almost any number of other kinds of data attached to it.

  Robert> The data would be just another file, so in a way every file would
  Robert> be a directory, though probably not with names, but with types, that
  Robert> is, if some of the associated data was an ACL, then what the kernel would
  Robert> want is to find acls associated with this file, not to find "foobar".


This would be useful for Visual Memory support on the Dreamcast port.
On the Visual Memory cards, all files have a standardized
variable-length header containing icons and stuff.  By placing this in
an "associated data"/fork and having only the data payload in the
normal file, applications wouldn't have to go through the hassle of
computing the header length to seek past it, and applications not
aware of the header format would still be able to read/write files
without conflicting with the header system.


  // Marcus