[Design] Requirements?

[Ray Ryan]

On Wednesday, November 27, 2002, at 03:49  PM, Andy Hertzfeld wrote:

[Much snippage]

> We plan to run on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows, but unfortunately our 
> user is probably running Windows - hopefully, that, too, will change 
> over time.

Which Windows? Will the Win 9x/ME crowd be supported? Win2K? Or only 
WinXP? And for that matter, which Linux?

>    Big files like movies and music won't be stored in Chandler, but 
> metadata about them will be.  In other words, you'll be able to 
> annotate them and even transfer them with Chandler, but they won't be 
> part of a Chandler repository.  I think a lot of users won't have much 
> trouble putting gigabytes into Chandler, but not hundreds of gigs.   
> Information is almost always read a lot more than it's written, but we 
> hope to be good at annotating information, and linking objects, so our 
> storage has to be very flexible.

Does this mean that e-mail attachments (in my world often pictures, and 
increasingly movies of friends' new babies) will not be stored in 
Chandler, but moved immediately to the file system?

If it doesn't mean that, and Chandler will in fact store this 
increasingly huge attachments, shouldn't I also be able to throw files 
at it directly?

If I'm reading you right, how much thought should go into just how 
Chandler manages attachments that it plants in the file system for me, 
and how much say should the user have about that? Does it mean giving 
Chandler smarts to keep an eye on things in the file system as the user 
messes about with them?, a la the Mac's file aliases (personal 
obsession, mentioned it before).

Does it mean a bit of both? Raw e-mail include its Mime64'd attachments 
is sacrosanct, always stored in Chandler, but attachments are also 
cached in the file system?

I'm not at all sure what I think is the "right" answer to this 
particular question. I see worries either way: do I really trust this 
persistent pile of data not to corrupt itself and eat all my cherished 
photos? Do I really trust this pile of precious metadata not to lose 
track of the files it annotates?

> [Pito Salas <rps@salas.com>:]
>> - What kind of connectivity do they have, primarily? Will it be 
>> typical
>> or unusual that they are relying on a modem vs. a T1? What computer 
>> are
>> they running on? Platform and capacity and capability?
>>
>       Hopefully, they'll be able to do everything with just a modem, 
> but they'll enjoy it a lot more with a T1.  People will be able to 
> easily share information (i.e., their client can act as a server) even 
> if they don't have a fixed IP address.

I think you just said that Chandler needs to have a decent Offline 
mode, a la Mozilla's. It would be awfully easy, and unfortunate, for 
the wired-to-the-gills developers of Chandler to miss this.

Ray