Re: [9fans] Typesetting

[chad <y@mit.edu>]

> Well, I disagree that it simplifies something which is already simple.
> Consider creating ``sessions'' over HTTP as an example; I think the
> methods to do this are ad hoc and complex, if not entirely broken.
> Using file semantics makes this much easier.

I agree that the current methods for HTTP sessions are poor, but I
don't see how file/filesystem semantics improves the situation.  Care
to explain?

> Regarding intermediate nodes caching so much, yes, this is true, but if
> intermediate nodes use an LRU mechanism to maintain the cache, I'm
> willing to bet that very heavily used sites will stay in a lot of
> caches for a lot of the time (I have no empirical evidence to back that
> up, obviously).  What's more, there are fewer intermediate nodes
> contacting the origin site, which would have an effect on the system's
> overall scalability.

 From a previous life, I can tell you that most caches have very high
hit rates, typically better than 90%.  I don't have any data from the
past year or so, though, and heavily `interactive' content is
typically not cached.

> People seem bent on making the thing interactive, even though it wasn't
> built with that in mind.

I claim that people want to make the thing interactive because,
technical qualities aside, the web managed to be the first easily
cross-platform communications means in the burgeoning Internet.  On
the other hand, it seems to be a common pattern for certain classes of
systems; take a look at the specification for Gopher+ sometime. (for
amusement's sake :-)

chad