Enhancing the volumes function (was Volume Size)

[Richard Gaskin]

The other day I wrote:

 > Warren Samples wrote:
 > > The dictionary does indicated, by omission of the penguin icon,
 > > that 'volumes()' is not supported under Linux.
 >
 > Seems a silly omission, so I just submitted a request for that:
 > <http://quality.runrev.com/show_bug.cgi?id=13673>

That request has gotten some healthy attention from the core dev team at 
RunRev, but the nature of the request has expanded beyond the original 
goal of simply making volumes() work on Linux.

It occurred to me shortly after posting it that the current return 
value, consisting of volume names only, is close to useless on all three 
platforms.

On Mac, is the volume mounted at /Volumes/ or at /?
On Linux, is it at /mnt/ or /media/<user>/, or somewhere else?
On Windows, what drive letter is it mapped to?

In short, the volume name alone is insufficient to actually do anything 
meaningful with it.  In fact, I'm hard pressed to think of any 
circumstance where it might have been useful beyond Mac Classic.

The team is exploring many options, but the key to all of this boils 
down to this question:

What do we want to use a volumes function for?

Knowing the use cases the function should support will be very helpful 
in guiding the design decisions around this enhancement.

If you have a specific use case in mind, please feel free to add it in 
the comments for that request.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com