So both modes should be offered, and there should be an option, to change your mind later, and request, that a note you have written at an earlier time is converted to characters, or whatever is appropriate. User's view of the file system Some thoughts, how the file system could look like to the user, without knowing, if this is better or even worse than what we have today. One should actually try it, to be able to judge it. There are files, which are a composition of a name and a heap of data. The name is used to refer to the data.
Directories have also a name, and some data.
The data is defined to be a list of names of other directories and files. I would try to leave away file and directory names. The way to locate a file would be through query on the content instead of a name. Some sort of directories would still exist, and enable to attach different files one to another. Directories could not be accessed directly.