Kanbaru 🌟 (one hikari of too many)

i love Android. i love how it is the future of computing, because i love progress, and i love innovation, and i love how innovation only makes things better. i love how computers keep getting even more useful. i love how a new generation only know Android. https://github.com/hikari-no-yume/touchHLE/commit/6d714bbf0d2c64743c7b2b24e9c5af479b17631c

screenshot of a deeply bitter paragraph from touchHLE's upcoming release notes, explaining how, via a huge amount of boilerplate code, users on newer versions of Android will finally be able to manage files, albeit in a way inferior to previous versions of Android and to other, normal operating systems. the paragraph uses text styling to sarcastically gesture towards the true fact that “file” and “directory” are deprecated concepts in the Android world, replaced by “document” and “location”.
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Avebury Rosetta :transistor: 🍉🏴🚩

(replying to Kanbaru 🌟 (one hikari of too many))

@hikari
Hey wait a sec, that sounds like what CLOSOS tried to do. That is, move away from a strict file hierarchy and more like a searchable object store. news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2

Kanbaru 🌟 (one hikari of too many)

(replying to Avebury Rosetta :transistor: 🍉🏴🚩)

@avesbury_rosetta I think a lot of OS projects have attempted this, but I suspect they had better reasons and better implementations than Android. Android's API was designed many years ago for the likes of Google Drive, then they made the sandboxing tighter recently, effectively deprecating normal filesystem usage and just… failed to provide an alternative, so modelling everything as if it were cloud storage became the only option by default

Kanbaru 🌟 (one hikari of too many)

(replying to Kanbaru 🌟 (one hikari of too many))

please stop trying to kill the file system. please. please for the love of all that is good in the world

Kanbaru 🌟 (one hikari of too many)

(replying to Kanbaru 🌟 (one hikari of too many))

by the way, the solution to the same problem on iOS is just:

    "UIFileSharingEnabled": true,

it's existed for thirteen years, it doesn't require any code, and it supports normal fucking POSIX filesystem APIs

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Saagar Jha

(replying to Kanbaru 🌟 (one hikari of too many))
@hikari Apple of course recommends that you not use the normal POSIX APIs

Kanbaru 🌟 (one hikari of too many)

(replying to Saagar Jha)

@saagar I have of course seen their latest piece of comedy

Saagar Jha

(replying to Kanbaru 🌟 (one hikari of too many))
@hikari Don’t be upset when files disappear out from under you

Kanbaru 🌟 (one hikari of too many)

(replying to Kanbaru 🌟 (one hikari of too many))

this is made all the more confusing by the fact newer Android versions still use the “file” and “file manager” metaphor in user-facing text, and there is a long list of exceptions that make it very hard to make general statements. many users will not have noticed the change.

Kanbaru 🌟 (one hikari of too many)

(replying to Kanbaru 🌟 (one hikari of too many))

in Android 11, Google fundamentally changed what a file is and what a file manager does, without communicating this to users. we as app developers are left to pick up the pieces, desperately trying to explain this incomprehensible system to users who think we're gaslighting them.

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Michael Dwyer

(replying to Kanbaru 🌟 (one hikari of too many))

@hikari
Um ... I was honestly hoping you would follow this post up with that explanation.
Because all I know is that, if my web browser ever downloads a PDF file instead of opening it itself, then that PDF file is gone forever.
Future archaeologists will find my pile of lost files some day and wonder why the hell someone ever needed twelve copies of the same file.
I hate what Android has become. The "freedom" argument I used to make is ringing hollow now days.

Kanbaru 🌟 (one hikari of too many)

(replying to Michael Dwyer)

@mdwyer unfortunately it's so complicated that nobody who understands it understands it completely, nor do they want to explain it

Kanbaru 🌟 (one hikari of too many)

(replying to Kanbaru 🌟 (one hikari of too many))

btw while Google were reinventing the filesystem they created a new URI scheme for “content” that is apparently unusable for the most important application of URIs, namely hyperlinks. opening “content://org.touchhle.android.provider/” brings up… the Messages app??? what the fuck

Kanbaru 🌟 (one hikari of too many)

(replying to Kanbaru 🌟 (one hikari of too many))

ok never mind, it's just “content://org.touchhle.android.provider/root/root”. allegedly this only works on some devices but look, that's almost a normal URI. do not ask me why it opens Messages if i get the path wrong

Kanbaru 🌟 (one hikari of too many)

(replying to Kanbaru 🌟 (one hikari of too many))

btw adb shell am to-uri and adb shell am start-activity are extremely useful.

also in case you didn't believe me about the file manager not being a file manager: its true name is com.android.documentsui