To discover synopses, SynFS adds content-based addressing based on synopsis properties. Finally, for operational encapsulation, SynFS adds method invocation as a way of operating on a synopsis. SynFS leverages technology from the object and World-Wide Web communities to address two specific problems. First, to address the problem of adding structure and a well defined interface to data in files, we borrow the concept of encapsulation and typing from the object community. A synopsis is an object that contains data and a set of methods that operate on the data.
Every synopsis is typed and that identifies the data and the methods that can be invoked.
The SynFS type system is extensible in that new types can be created after the system is installed. Type definitions are stored in a globally accessible type repository. In a traditional file system, a user can see the raw data in a file or must run a specific application to view the information content. The raw data presents no information about the information content of the file, but a specific application limits the scope of interaction. HTML makes it possible for SynFS to present additional semantic information about a file without limiting the scope of interaction.