"I'll follow your suggestion combined with my aversion to the CR, and write something else."
That, of course, is not what Dave suggested. He suggested you write your own UI on top of the CR.
Alternatively, you could look at extending the file storage package (using "extends" rather than "requires") to do what you want, but I agree with Dave that FS has been pretty much FUBAR'd by undisciplined changes to FS.
Your aversion to the CR is just ... strange.
