Clarifying the site's position

[Michael Conrad]

Well, "environment" sounds like a good terminology choice, such as "a TUNES
environment", "TUNES is a reflective operating environment", etc.  I realize
that "system" is really the perfect word for TUNES (and is part of the
acronym, after all) (see dictionary.com) but it often makes people think of
"operating system", which then invokes all sorts of ideas about kernels and
processes and hardware drivers.  (Really, the term "System matrix" would be
the most descriptive. (honestly, you can't let hollywood steal a word with
such a cool definition) )

If you were to go through the website and substitute "environment" for
"system" where appropriate, it would probably clarify things.  Kind of like
how the word "Java" refers to a virtual machine, an environment, and a
language, and conversations can get very confusing when people say "java"
without specifying which aspect of it they are referring to.  "TUNES System"
is mentioned many places on the website, and almost sounds like a reference
to the hardware-operating aspect of TUNES.  I realize this is clarified in
several places (one being the FAQ) but often people browse in from a Google
search, and won't see the index page.

Actually, this is turning into a question.  TUNES seems to be primarily
concerned with the language, its capabilities, the mother-of-all-compilers
that goes with it.  Then, TUNES will also be its own hardware-driving
operating system, which is the logical way to unleash its true power.  But
then where does TUNES end, and "distro syndrome" begin?  Will TUNES go as
far as Java and have standard buffering, reading, writing, tokenizing,
painting, widgeting, and other objects?  or will it stop before that? or
will it go all the way with a standard User object, password database
object, and similar operational infastructure to what UNIX has?

I see benefits and pitfalls in both directions...  Thoughts?

-Michael Conrad


----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian T Rice" <water@tunes.org>
To: "Michael Conrad" <conradme@email.uc.edu>
Cc: <tunes@tunes.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2003 1:07 AM
Subject: Clarifying the site's position (was Re: At the risk of being
flamed.)


> I will put together an addition to http://tunes.org/tunes.html which
> includes the significance of this remark I made about TUNES being an
> environment intrinsically, and not specifically about replacing things.
>
> This seems like a useful thing to emphasize. More generally, some other
> notes around the site emphasizing the role of the Review areas and how
> they state our case collectively would also seem to help. I will work out
> how this should be done and then make changes accordingly. Are there any
> suggestions about this idea?
>
> --
> Brian T. Rice
> LOGOS Research and Development
> mailto:water@tunes.org
> http://tunes.org/~water/
>