Oops

[Alaric B. Williams]

> I couldn't resist this small comment -

> >    Perhaps you'd like your CPU to talk in Scheme with the memory
> > or I/O subsystem, and Superduperfastwwwwiiiiddddeee-SCSI-36 disks
> > to directly interpret SEXP. Personally I feel that'd be a terrible waste.
> > I mightn't look like so, but I don't disdain performance.

> The old PET computer used to talk to its disk drives using BASIC
> over its GPIB (IEEE488) bus.

IEEE488? I was considering building an interface to that once (y'know,
just for fun :-) and I have a friend with some old PET hardware (or was
it CBM? I dunno)... we found that we could link both the computers
to the disk drive with the funny bus thing, as long as we were careful
not to cause a collision, thus implementing a... file server?!?!?

> And Postscript was designed as a human
> readable (and programmable) way to talk to printers.

Sadly a bit complex, though :-(

> I consider
> both these efforts (including using Postscript for windowing -
> NeWS and NeXTStep) to have had good results, even if they didn't
> really "catch on".

Indeed; and the MLM protocol wouldn't be used for EVERYTHING. Just
tasks on the kind of level that humans are likely to be interested in.
Anything needing performance can go use byte streams and net blits
for all I care... I was planning on making a /dynamic/ protocol stack for
ARGON's IPC, you know!

> But I hope
> the Tunes takes into account these older experiences I have
> mentioned here.

Commit yourself, Fare... what kind of network protocol DO you want? :--)
 
> -- Jecel Mattos de Assumpcao Jr -- mailto: jecel@lsi.usp.br
>           http://www.lsi.usp.br/~jecel/merlin.html

ABW
--
Alaric B. Williams Internet : alaric@abwillms.demon.co.uk
http://www.abwillms.demon.co.uk/