Hi, My reaction is just an addition to David's post...
Citát David Chisnall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Looks like everyone is trying to re-invent Plan 9. I think, however, > the `everything is a file' concept is not something we should > encourage. The metaphor simply doesn't work. The idea that you can > handle everything as a file would be nice if UNIX supported VMS-style > files containing typed data, but unfortunately it only supports files > as untyped bytestreams, making the file a highly sub-optimal thing > for everything to be. > Well, works and does not. For everything it does not, but for everything that is stream based it does. Note that we are dealing with two things: stream based data and object based data. UNIX is stream oriented and was not designed to handle objects in native way. Etoile is going to mainly object oriented, but that does not mean, that we should throw away streams... > The original idea behind this was that it should be possible to > interact with everything by sending it a stream of characters, be it > a printer, a screen or a file. Unfortunately, when things like > formatted text, sound, and graphics came along, it became necessary > to add all sorts of ioctls to get around the differences between the > behaviours of these objects, completely destroying the transparency > that was originally intended. > .. and here it comes: You use streams for passing data, but objects for control of the streams. Unix/Linux is being raped in the favor of 'everything is a file' concept - see /proc or /sys. > GNUstep provides a much more powerful interface by allowing > introspection on arbitrary objects. > Yes. Therefore: keep files for streams and make them live together with objects. Simple rules for the whole operating envionment: - if it is a stream-based (content of the printed page, loudspeaker, microphone...), use read/write/seek - if it is an object (printer controller, sound card, ...) send messages to the object Stefan Urbanek -- http://stefan.agentfarms.net First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. - Mahatma Gandhi
