Persistence and Newton OS...

[William Tanksley]

>Hey all,

Hello!

>I actually don't have anything really to contribute on this topic right
>now, but I was wondering if there has been any discussion or thought
>about the NewtonOS.  If you're not familiar with it, it achieved a form
>of persistence (I think that's th right term :) because all of it's
>storage is in RAM, kept up by a constant power supply (the batteries).
>I don't own a Newton, but played with one once and thought that was a
>nice feature.  Pardon me if this has been covered before, I am currently
>working my way through the archives and hadn't noticed any mention of
>that.

The reason we're not considering that at the moment is that it's totally out
of reach.  The memory needed for that is SRAM or low-power DRAM, which is
either enormously expensive or immensely slow.

A far better method is to manage storage so that there's no
application-dectectable difference between persistent objects and temporary
ones, and then placing the persistent object in persistent storage.
Actually, the Newton does some of that, but it's not particularly good at
it.

If the Tunes pages don't discuss NewtOS it's probably because of lack of
time -- it does do some things well, and should be researched.  I prefer
Geos, but then everyone here knows that.  :)

>Josh

-Billy