FAT/Minix conversion

[ekl@SDF.LONESTAR.ORG (Evan Langlois)]

I was thinking that additional kludges when reading a Fat drive from
a MiNT domain process or a Minix drive from a TOS domain process might
be in order.

The fat drive would  have access 660 for all files, and 770 for all
directories.  The FAT/DOS attributes would be parsed to modify this:
	READ-ONLY	AND 220
	SYSTEM		AND 700
	
Also, Executable programs (ending in .sh, .prg, .tos, .ttp, .app, .gtp)
should have the extension stripped, and the mask OR'd with 110.  A file
marked as HIDDEN should have the regular extension concatenated to the
filename with a dot (.) prefixed to the filename.  So a hidden file
named "PROFILE" becomes ".profile" (all filenames from a FAT system should
be converted to lowercase), and a hidden "SCREEN.RC" becomes ".screenrc".
Doing this in the TOSFS driver instead of the library would make things
MUCH easier since a library would only have to deal with either TOS/FAT
nameing conventions or Unix conventions (depending on how the library
set the process domain) and wouldn't have to deal with each convention
and on each type of filesystem.

Unix/Minix filenames should also be parsed this way.  All access
permissions should apply as normal and be used from the drive, no matter
what the process domain, but a file where a particular user does
not have access could be marked as SYSTEM + READONLY (but don't let the 
user actually read the file, of course) to TOS domain programs, while 
those with only a r-- access to that file would have a TOS attribute
of READ-ONLY.  Files that have a executable permission would automatically
have a .ttp attached, or maybe .prg (any ideas on how to make the desktop
recognize which is a GEM program and which is not)? I think all programs
run from the desktop should have stdin and stdout routed to a pipe,
and then pretend its a GEM program - if there is IO on that pipe (reroute
BIOS too) then open a window manager to handle the IO automatically.  Then
a bad GEM program wouldn't put TOS text on the screen anymore - and you
wouldn't have any differences between the .TTP and the .PRG programs (and
you'd be a mint domain process that looked at the --x bit anyway).

Minix files that begin with a dot (.) could be marked as HIDDEN (and drop
the dot), and maybe kludge it to recognize files that end with certain
characters as the extension.  So, for example, ".screenrc" would look
like "SCREEN.RC" with HIDDEN set to a TOS domain process.  Convert the
filenames to all upper-case for TOS domain programs, and TOS domain
should NOT be case sensitive!  Also, the LAST 3 characters of a filename
should be the extension, don't just truncate (I think some versions
of minix truncate it, so that reallybigfile.tgz becomes REALLYBI.GFI,
when it should be REALLYBI.TGZ - I'm not exactly sure if that is the
way Minix handles it or not though).

Also, how do I give a user access to more than one group?  What if I want
to a user access to 5 or 6 groups?

Anyone like these ideas?  If so I might try hacking them into TOSFS
and digging around for the MINIXFS sources.  I'd rather get feedback first,
and then maybe talk some enthusiastic<sp?> and more experienced person
into making the changes <grin>.

CYA,
Evan Langlois
ekl@sdf.lonestar.org