> AGH! No, this is not at all similar.  You said "ISO9660 supports ...". 
> That's right.  It's special magic in the filesystem.  There is *no*
> special support in the Amiga filesystem.  There are two files.  Period. 
> That's all they are, two plain, ordinary files.  One has an extension
> that, *to a particular application* marks it as being related to the
> other.  That's the only relationship.  file and file.info are no more
> related as far as the OS is concerned than file.c and file.o are, or
> file and file.gz.  It works on any filesystem. 

Actually, it _is_ quite similar.  Note that the semantics of these 'associated
files' isn't defined in ISO9660.  It isn't even clear whether it is required
that for any of these associated files the accompanying non-associated file
needs to exist.  Having said this, this associated attribute is more or less
just an extension of the name, i.e. something that allows a deviation from
the XXX.YYY;### scheme that is otherwise required.

> From my point of view, it looks like people are inventing excuses to
> implement new functionality without any real reason for it, other than
> it sounds cool.

Yes, that's my feeling, too.  Actually, it looks to me like an attempt to
bring back typed files through a backdoor (or is it the front door?).  I
always thought that one of the great ideas behind U*X was that everything
is a file is a file...

Ciao,
Wolfgang
-- 
ws@TooLs.DE     (Wolfgang Solfrank, TooLs GmbH) 	+49-228-985800