I use a lot of Java applets (jmol, but without the plug-in) in my organic chemistry course. Because you can no longer use relative links, every time I need to post an applet, I have to upload the entire set of files for the applet to run, and then "set main file." (Setting main file to another resource does not work.) Before I would have uploaded this once. Hence, I suspect it is consuming considerably more space, not less, as one might think.
Re: Example where Moodle 2 consumes considerably more space, not less
There are more severe examples, see "Moodledata volume 100%full - how to find zip or mbz files" http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=210356.
I didn't get the point. Are you trying to disprove Murphy's Fourth Law http://murphyslaws.net/by_topic.htm#11 ?
Re: Example where Moodle 2 consumes considerably more space, not less
One of the reasons (I think) to switch to repositories was such that you didn't have to upload things over and over; and to save space since you could link to a previous version of a file. This clearly doesn't accomplish that, and wouldn't in any mini-website for which you want to post different parts of it as different resources. You would have to post the entire mini-website every time if you want to have different start points for different resources.
Re: Example where Moodle 2 consumes considerably more space, not less
I'm not sure whether we mean the same thing. You say, Moodle 2 does not allow relative links, but Moodle 1.9 did not allow them either. In the case of mini-sites, I always upload the full set of HTML files and linked the index page through Moodle.
Never tried Java applets though. Can you give a detailed example?
Re: Example where Moodle 2 consumes considerably more space, not less
Actually, I figured this out.
The original question is equivalent to asking what happens if you have the same, large mini-website but you want to have different start points as different resources. I thought you had to upload the same set of HTML files multiple times, setting one file as the main file. The set of folders I upload is 21 MB each time I upload it, and is horribly space consumptive.
But what you can do is upload the mini-HTML as one resource, and then post a URL for different pages; since the relative files work there, you don't have to upload the same thing over and over again.
Re: Example where Moodle 2 consumes considerably more space, not less
When you say that this is 'horribly space consumptive', you don't seem to be taking into account the fact that Moodle 2 stores identical files only once. If you upload the same file 100 times, even if you give it a different name every time, Moodle will detect that the contents are the same and only store the file once on the server (with multiple references to it in the database).