mapping files to objects

[Mike McDonald]

>To: cwg@deepeddy.com
>Subject: Re: mapping files to objects 
>Date: Tue, 06 May 1997 14:54:35 -0700
>From: Kelly Murray <kem@franz.com>
>
>
>I'm really starting to feel like I'm just repeating myself over
>and over, so I'll probably stop saying anything, since it doesn't
>seem to be getting across.
>
>A Lisp mail system won't need to read any files.

  It does until a POS is available. It might still want to even after
the POS is up and running.

>What "something is" is determined by what that something IS.
>
>If you replace SMTP/sendmail with a Lisp program, you'll never
>in your life see a "file" again, let alone one in /var/spool/mail
>or ~user/Mail. 

  Once sendmail is replaced and it use a POS, that is correct. That's
a while from now. I'm hoping that you're not suggesting that
everything wait until a POS is done. If that's what you are
suggesting, then I believe the LispOS project is dead right now.

> OK, so someone sends you mail message with a image
>in it.  The Lisp mail program processes the mail message, and
>creates a composite mail message having a list of two components,
>a #<text-message> and a #<gif>.
>So you want to compress the gif?  (compress #<gif>) => #<compressed-gif>
>There is no foo.gif.gz file, it's a 'compressed-gif' object.

  No disagreement here.

  Mike McDonald
  mikemac@engr.sgi.com