Quote:
Originally Posted by TechniSol
Why should we settle for a forty+ year old file browser concept?
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I was wondering exactly the same thing, TechniSol!
Directories (or "folders" for those that grew up with GUI's) were invented back in the 60's for the Multics operating system. They were a handy way of separating and sorting files. Microsoft has realised for a while that directories are actually quite limiting and started work on WinFS (Windows Future Storage) which combined file storage with a relational database for storing meta data about the files. Using this method it would possible to do all sorts of queries to get lists of files (WinFS did a lot more than just this, but this is the part that's relevant to this conversation). Unfortunately WinFS was cancelled, but some parts of it have made it into Windows; Windows 7 introduced the idea of a "library", where a file could reside in one or more libraries, thus allowing you to organise files in different ways.
IMHO accessing the Kobo's library via its database could be very powerful, allowing for all sorts of segmenting and sorting. With "shelves" we've seen some of this come to life, but there's probably a lot more you could do. Accessing the library directly via a simple file system seems like a step backwards to me.