I want to create a CD with a bunch of files on it.  I want to make it easy for
the user, regardless of OS, to be able to grab subsets of the files.  If we were
talking about books, say all the ones by Chris Cason or all the ones about
povray.

If there were enough room, an inefficient way, but one guaranteed to work, is to
create separate directory systems, one by author, one by topic, etc..  Chris'
hypothetical book on povray would be put into two different directories. Then
the user could go to the directory of interest and copy everything.

I'm wondering if there's some technology out there that can do this? Python
scripts? Windows Shortcuts?

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gregjohn <pte### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> If there were enough room, an inefficient way, but one guaranteed to work, is to
> create separate directory systems, one by author, one by topic, etc..  Chris'
> hypothetical book on povray would be put into two different directories. Then
> the user could go to the directory of interest and copy everything.

  That's what soft links are for. I don't know, however, if any commonly
used CD file system supports soft links.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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gregjohn wrote:
> I want to create a CD with a bunch of files on it.  I want to make it easy for
> the user, regardless of OS, to be able to grab subsets of the files.  If we were
> talking about books, say all the ones by Chris Cason or all the ones about
> povray.

 > regardless of OS

I think I found your problem, sir.

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net

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gregjohn schrieb:
> I want to create a CD with a bunch of files on it.  I want to make it easy for
> the user, regardless of OS, to be able to grab subsets of the files.  If we were
> talking about books, say all the ones by Chris Cason or all the ones about
> povray.
> 
> If there were enough room, an inefficient way, but one guaranteed to work, is to
> create separate directory systems, one by author, one by topic, etc..  Chris'
> hypothetical book on povray would be put into two different directories. Then
> the user could go to the directory of interest and copy everything.
> 
> I'm wondering if there's some technology out there that can do this? Python
> scripts? Windows Shortcuts?

HTML pages for each topic that link to the relevant files?

AFAIK there's also the possibility to have multiple directory entries on 
a CD refer to the same physical sectors, though I guess you'd need 
special tools to accomplish that. I heard tell that various copy 
protection systems use(d) that approach to inflate the content of the 
CD, so that when trying to do a file-by-file copy the resulting data 
would be too voluminous to burn on a CD again.

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gregjohn wrote:
> I want to create a CD with a bunch of files on it.  I want to make it easy for
> the user, regardless of OS, to be able to grab subsets of the files.  If we were
> talking about books, say all the ones by Chris Cason or all the ones about
> povray.
> 
> I'm wondering if there's some technology out there that can do this? Python
> scripts? Windows Shortcuts?

So you have several *overlapping* sets of stuff?

Well, you could write a Bash script (which will, AFAIK, work with Linux, 
BSD, MacOS X, Solaris, HP-UX...) and a batch file (which will work with 
MS-DOS, MS Windows, and presumably ReactOS). The fun part is going to be 
deciding where to copy the files to; neither scripting language provides 
any easy way to do this.

Alternatively, you could try writing something in Java. This has a 
reasonable probability of working on any half-modern OS, and provides 
ample GUI capabilities for asking the user exactly which set(s) of files 
they want, and where to put them.

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Warp wrote:
>   That's what soft links are for. I don't know, however, if any commonly
> used CD file system supports soft links.

Or hard links, for that matter.

I'm pretty sure ISO9660 allows multiple directory entries to point to the 
same file. You just have to find a program that will write them that way.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Yes, we're traveling togeher,
   but to different destinations.

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   That's what soft links are for. I don't know, however, if any commonly
> > used CD file system supports soft links.

> Or hard links, for that matter.

  True. The difference is, of course, that with soft links you have the
original file, and an independent "link" pointing to it somewhere else.
The original file has a definite location, and you can easily see that
the soft link is just a link pointing there.

  A hard link is, effectively, like if the file was in two places at the
same time (although its contents are stored in the disk only once). There
is no "original" file, as both file entries point to the same data. They
are both as "original" as the other. (In most unix file systems a program
like 'ls' will actually show the amount of hard links pointing to the same
file when you list the file; ie. like a reference count. It doesn't show
*where* those other links are, but you can see how many of them there are.)

  In this particular case the latter situation might even be better, in fact.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   In this particular case the latter situation might even be better, in fact.

I can't think of any downside, given that the medium is R/O.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Yes, we're traveling togeher,
   but to different destinations.

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   In this particular case the latter situation might even be better, in fact.

> I can't think of any downside, given that the medium is R/O.

  I can think of one: If you copy the contents somewhere else, the files
will be duplicated. With soft links they won't (at least if you use the
proper type of copying).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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