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Inter-Office Memorandum To Wendell Shultz Date Aug. 30, 1977 From Dave Redell Location Palo Alto Subject Comments on Janus-l filing Organization SOD/SO XEROX Filed on: janlisfiling.memo Below are my comments on the Document Filing System chapter of the Janus-l Functional Spec. Since I have not read the entire document with equal thoroughness, some of these comments may be based on lack of understanding, but for the most part, I think they are valid questions, and in a few cases, criticisms. Disk volumes vs File grouping: - The exact correspondence of a physical volume to single file drawer seems open to question, although I suppose the user will have to think of the removable volume as a logical unit, whether that is convenient or not. - The notion of a "folder" as an intermediate grouping between documents and drawers seems to have gone away. I think this is too bad; folders seem like a useful idea, and would tend to lessen somewhat the impact of the artificial nature of the fixed-size drawer as a logical entity. - I don't think we should refuse to remember anything about files on offline volumes. Certainly, such information could not be guaranteed up-to-date, but the poor user with 87 floppy disks would probably find it helpful. and it shouldn't be very hard to retain a snapshot of recently-seen directories (perhaps a list of the user's favorite folders, if there are such things) This shouldn't be much of a storage problem, especially if we have a rigid system disk. - Are there any problems with allowing non-uniqueness of file-drawer names? This seems like the right idea, since global uniqueness would be essentially impossible to guarantee, but is there any impact on systems which can access several document disks at once. (E.g. multiple floppy drives, or via the X-wire). Selection: - I don't understand why the type-in mode of selection is necessary. I thought the original idea was to always point with the mouse. Isn't this sufficient? Wouldn't it eliminate the need for uniqueness of document names? - The single notion of Current File Selection to apply to both documents and drawers seems a little clumsy. This seems to be motivated essentially by the desire to share the "Show Options" button; is there perhaps a more graceful alternative? - Perhaps the notion of multi-document selection would be useful (as in DDS). This seems to be what is actually going on when "Delete" is applied to the entire file Comments on Janlls-l Functional Spec: Documen