Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>>>   But they don't. Why not? I have no idea.
> 
>> Did you ask them?
> 
>   Yeah, like they are going to answer me.

I know. I was being mildly sarcastic.

>   Do they have that in Vista? 

Yes.  Sadly, no "open administrative command line here".

> There's an extension for XP (doesn't come by
> default, naturally), but it only makes it just slightly less inconvenient.

Yes. (Lots less, actually, I've found.)

>   I wish Windows Explorer listed it like that. But it doesn't.

Yep.

>> And I'm explaining why, under Windows, that question is ambiguous, by 
>> providing an analogy that shows "how big is it" doesn't always have a 
>> trivial answer.
> 
>   You yourself gave an unambiguous answer in the above listing.

That's only unambiguous because that's the one they picked.

>   And Windows Explorer already shows the proper file size. The problem is
> that it's rounded.

Are you sure?

Actually, it's not showing the file size. It's showing the file last byte 
marker. The file could have more data after that, or could be missing data 
before that.  I can give you a file that shows that number as three million 
that has *no* data associated with the file, simply by deleting the bytes 
off the start of the file.

>>>   So what? I'm not interested in how much disk space the file is taking.
> 
>> But most other people are. Hence the default UI.
> 
>   Windows Explorer doesn't show the disk space the file is taking. It shows
> the size of the file (rounded).

Not quite "size of the file", no. If there are holes in the file, or if 
there are alternate streams holding data, neither of those is "the size of 
the file". It's more "the place data would get appended were you to append 
it to the primary data stream." :-) There's undoubtably an unambiguous name 
for that that Microsoft has decided upon.

Perhaps "number of bytes you could read from the file if you first copied it 
to a file system that didn't support the stuff NTFS does" or some such.

>   It's MacOS X Finder which shows the disk space rather than the file size.

I can't argue for that. But I strongly suspect Apple has done more research 
into what people want in MacOS than you have. :-)

>   How many regular Windows users even *know* that there's a program called
> 'dxdiag' or another called 'regedit', much less have ever launched them?

I suspect quite a few have used dxdiag when their game didn't run, actually. 
The regedit I'll grant you is probably only used by people knowing what 
they're doing.

But now you're asking me to justify Microsoft not writing some piece of 
code. I don't know. I'm just listing possible reasons, and you're saying 
"that's not good enough for me, dammit!"

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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