[OGo-Users] Linxu davfs and the open locally button

[Helge Hess]

On Oct 5, 2006, at 12:47, Sebastian Reitenbach wrote:
> I already asked the davfs developer, and he says, that taking the  
> file title
> instead of the name is a feature,

Its not a feature its an obvious bug. Since the displayname has no  
requirement for being unique it cannot be used as a primary  
identifier (like a filename in a filesystem).

> as it is noted in the RFC:
>
> Wrong file names:
> -----------------
> This is meant to be a feature not a bug. The RFC says about
> displayname:
>
> "  Name:       displayname
>    Namespace:  DAV:
>    Purpose:    Provides a name for the resource that is
> suitable for
>    presentation to a user.

A filesystem is backend infrastructure, not a tool. The presentation  
to the user is done by a tool like 'ls' though even in this case  
displayname would always be the wrong thing (since 'ls' is also used  
as infrastructure, that is, the ls output is used as input for other  
tools like 'cat' which obviously need to have the unique identifier  
of the file, not the display name).

Well, and even if the user gets the displayname, how is he supposed  
to continue in the file hierarchy if he doesn't know the name of the  
file?


Sample. On the WebDAV Server we have a collection containing this:
   /mydocuments
     RelativeURL       DisplayName
     sales2005.xls     Sales Spreadsheet for Q1-Q4 2005
     sales2006.xls     Sales Spreadsheet for Q1-Q4 2006
     sales2006-2.xls   Sales Spreadsheet for Q1-Q4 2006

In a WebDAV aware client like Konqueror or Windows WebFolders the  
displayname can be shown to the user but the path being used is of  
course the relative URL.
A Unix filesystem doesn't distinguish between filename and  
displayname so it has no other option but to use the (possibly  
cryptic) relative URL.

Apparently if you do:
   cd mydocuments
   ls
on DavFS it displays
   Sales Spreadsheet for Q1-Q4 2005
   Sales Spreadsheet for Q1-Q4 2006
   Sales Spreadsheet for Q1-Q4 2006
fair enough. But how does the user continue? cd "Sales Spreadsheet  
for Q1-Q4 2006" won't work. And
   /mydocuments/Sales Spreadsheet%20for%20Q1-Q4%202006
isn't a valid URL on the server anyway (does DavFS at least do the  
back mapping assuming that displaynames are unique?).


BTW: since displayname is a WebDAV dead property the user can set it  
like he wants to.
BTW2: of course collections can also have display names.

> well, I just asked whether he can add a mount option to ignore the
> <displayname> properties, but I was just curious whether I can  
> influence this
> from the server side?

The displayname is never part of the URL! (and I definitely won't add  
such nonsense). Its just a WebDAV property for displaying a URL to  
the user.

Greets,
   Helge
-- 
Helge Hess
http://docs.opengroupware.org/Members/helge/