[9fans] I suppose if there's no other way to do it (a quote from the tcl web site)

[9fans] I suppose if there's no other way to do it (a quote from the tcl web site)

[Ronald G Minnich]

"Sure, some other languages have libraries for accessing web or ftp 
sites, or looking inside zip files. But how many provide an open ended 
and extensible system that allows you to access any such resource using 
the same I/O commands you'd use with regular disk files?"

hmm. in the language library? Well, I guess if that's all you can do ... 
but this is a really odd quote.

And I actually like tcl ...

ron

Re: [9fans] I suppose if there's no other way to do it (a quote from the tcl web site)

[LiteStar numnums]

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What's so odd about it? The same comment applies to Plan9 & 9p:

"Sure, some other operating systems have programs for accessing web or ftp
sites, or looking inside zip files. But how many provide an open ended
and extensible system that allows you to access any such resource using
the same I/O commands you'd use with regular disk files?"

On 8/10/06, Ronald G Minnich <rminnich@lanl.gov> wrote:
>
> "Sure, some other languages have libraries for accessing web or ftp
> sites, or looking inside zip files. But how many provide an open ended
> and extensible system that allows you to access any such resource using
> the same I/O commands you'd use with regular disk files?"
>
> hmm. in the language library? Well, I guess if that's all you can do ...
> but this is a really odd quote.
>
> And I actually like tcl ...
>
> ron
>



-- 
Lead thou me on, O Zeus, and Destiny,
To that goal long ago to me assigned.
I'll follow and not falter; if my will
Prove weak and craven, still I'll follow on.
-- Epictetus

He who enters his wife's dressing room is a philosopher or a fool. -- Balzac

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Re: [9fans] I suppose if there's no other way to do it (a quote from the tcl web site)

[David Leimbach]

On 8/10/06, Ronald G Minnich <rminnich@lanl.gov> wrote:
> "Sure, some other languages have libraries for accessing web or ftp
> sites, or looking inside zip files. But how many provide an open ended
> and extensible system that allows you to access any such resource using
> the same I/O commands you'd use with regular disk files?"
>

C++ iostreams perhaps?  I've got one for sockets, pipes etc...  Now
that's not the same as FTP sites and zip files, but it could be done.
Then you can use the same iterators and algorithms to glue it all
together.  In fact, I think I saw a zlibstream once.  I was thinking
of writing one.

It's done via a blend of template generic programming and OOP.  Too
bad C++ quickly becomes quite confusing and is very easy to abuse and
make difficult to maintain (probably an understatement).

Plan 9 gives me a lot of that power right at the shell because the OS
multiplexes 9P so well.


> hmm. in the language library? Well, I guess if that's all you can do ...
> but this is a really odd quote.
>
> And I actually like tcl ...
>
> ron
>

Re: [9fans] I suppose if there's no other way to do it (a quote from the tcl web site)

[erik quanstrom]

*not* providing a library for these things is the key.
for example, page doesn't link against the jpeg library.  
it just runs jpg.  nedmail doesn't link against the mime
library, it uses upas/fs and marshal.  

if plan 9 provided fancy library interfaces for such things,
we might be temted by the sirens "shared libraries" and "oop
languages".

- erik

On Fri Aug 11 02:22:13 CDT 2006, leimy2k@gmail.com wrote:
> On 8/10/06, Ronald G Minnich <rminnich@lanl.gov> wrote:
> > "Sure, some other languages have libraries for accessing web or ftp
> > sites, or looking inside zip files. But how many provide an open ended
> > and extensible system that allows you to access any such resource using
> > the same I/O commands you'd use with regular disk files?"
> >
> 
> C++ iostreams perhaps?  I've got one for sockets, pipes etc...  Now
> that's not the same as FTP sites and zip files, but it could be done.
> Then you can use the same iterators and algorithms to glue it all
> together.  In fact, I think I saw a zlibstream once.  I was thinking
> of writing one.
> 
> It's done via a blend of template generic programming and OOP.  Too
> bad C++ quickly becomes quite confusing and is very easy to abuse and
> make difficult to maintain (probably an understatement).
> 
> Plan 9 gives me a lot of that power right at the shell because the OS
> multiplexes 9P so well.
> 
> 
> > hmm. in the language library? Well, I guess if that's all you can do ...
> > but this is a really odd quote.
> >
> > And I actually like tcl ...
> >
> > ron

Re: Re: [9fans] I suppose if there's no other way to do it (a quote from the tcl web site)

[David Leimbach]

On 8/11/06, erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net> wrote:
> *not* providing a library for these things is the key.
> for example, page doesn't link against the jpeg library.
> it just runs jpg.  nedmail doesn't link against the mime
> library, it uses upas/fs and marshal.

I guess my point is it's just one abstraction that needs to be filled
in to get the same expressive behavior as you get by making a 9P
capable server for connecting to a given resource.  Then you get the
"same I/O commands you'd use..." as the quoted paragraph states.

If they're saying TCL is somehow deeper than OOP, I didn't absorb that
information from the copied paragraph.  OOP systems are very
open-ended, they're just terribly "close topped"  (which is how we end
up with things like Aspect Oriented Programming so you can cross-cut
functionality into an existing system rather than just extending and
overriding.)

>
> if plan 9 provided fancy library interfaces for such things,
> we might be temted by the sirens "shared libraries" and "oop
> languages".
>

Right but I'm not sure what that had to do with TCL?  ;-).  In some
ways having a binary you can call from another process *is* a kind of
"shared library" already.  Just as the kernel is a shared library of
sorts.... but yeah I understand your point.

Plan 9's abstractions for doing these things in the OS itself are (for
the lack of a better word at this early hour for me) "freakin'
badass!".  As a result I can far more with a shell, which is a safer
programming environment in terms of resource management I think, than
I can in pretty much any other programming language.

If people thought Unix is a good programming environment, they really
should give Plan 9 a try.

> - erik
>
> On Fri Aug 11 02:22:13 CDT 2006, leimy2k@gmail.com wrote:
> > On 8/10/06, Ronald G Minnich <rminnich@lanl.gov> wrote:
> > > "Sure, some other languages have libraries for accessing web or ftp
> > > sites, or looking inside zip files. But how many provide an open ended
> > > and extensible system that allows you to access any such resource using
> > > the same I/O commands you'd use with regular disk files?"
> > >
> >
> > C++ iostreams perhaps?  I've got one for sockets, pipes etc...  Now
> > that's not the same as FTP sites and zip files, but it could be done.
> > Then you can use the same iterators and algorithms to glue it all
> > together.  In fact, I think I saw a zlibstream once.  I was thinking
> > of writing one.
> >
> > It's done via a blend of template generic programming and OOP.  Too
> > bad C++ quickly becomes quite confusing and is very easy to abuse and
> > make difficult to maintain (probably an understatement).
> >
> > Plan 9 gives me a lot of that power right at the shell because the OS
> > multiplexes 9P so well.
> >
> >
> > > hmm. in the language library? Well, I guess if that's all you can do ...
> > > but this is a really odd quote.
> > >
> > > And I actually like tcl ...
> > >
> > > ron
>

Re: [9fans] I suppose if there's no other way to do it (a quote from the tcl web site)

[Ronald G Minnich]

btw, there is some sort of "spotlight"-like thing now for linux that I 
stumbled across.

It runs on all kinds of things, except reiser or something, as "reiser 
is not supported".

Goodness. Is it just parsing the on-disk file systems?

ron

Re: Re: [9fans] I suppose if there's no other way to do it (a quote from the tcl web site)

[erik quanstrom]

right.  but to make external processes work instead of using the
typical shared-library-o-rama, you need to have decided what the
system format is.  in plan 9, *the* storage character set is utf-8 and
Runes are used within programs; *the* image format is Image.  in the
gnu world, there is no base format, so using external programs to do
this kind of stuff is much more difficult.

plan 9 really is a great piece of work.

- erik

On Fri Aug 11 09:11:15 CDT 2006, leimy2k@gmail.com wrote:
> >
> > if plan 9 provided fancy library interfaces for such things,
> > we might be temted by the sirens "shared libraries" and "oop
> > languages".
> >
> 
> Right but I'm not sure what that had to do with TCL?  ;-).  In some
> ways having a binary you can call from another process *is* a kind of
> "shared library" already.  Just as the kernel is a shared library of
> sorts.... but yeah I understand your point.

Re: [9fans] I suppose if there's no other way to do it (a quote from the tcl web site)

[erik quanstrom]

care to share the name of this project? ;-)

btw, is there a way for a program to cooperate with a venti archive
and/or a fossil or fs to implement full-text search or something like slocate?

- erik

On Fri Aug 11 09:21:40 CDT 2006, rminnich@lanl.gov wrote:
> btw, there is some sort of "spotlight"-like thing now for linux that I 
> stumbled across.
> 
> It runs on all kinds of things, except reiser or something, as "reiser 
> is not supported".
> 
> Goodness. Is it just parsing the on-disk file systems?
> 
> ron

Re: [9fans] I suppose if there's no other way to do it (a quote from the tcl web site)

[Martin C. Atkins]

On Fri, 11 Aug 2006 12:18:07 -0500 erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net> wrote:
> care to share the name of this project? ;-)

He probably means Beagle.
	http://beagle-project.org/Main_Page

> On Fri Aug 11 09:21:40 CDT 2006, rminnich@lanl.gov wrote:
> > btw, there is some sort of "spotlight"-like thing now for linux that I 
> > stumbled across.

Actually, it pre-dates spotlight.

[BTW: The live update of search results is very impressive, I've not seen
spotlight in action: does it do this too?]

Martin 

-- 
Martin C. Atkins			martin_ml@parvat.com
Parvat Infotech Private Limited		http://www.parvat.com{/,/martin}

Re: [9fans] I suppose if there's no other way to do it (a quote from the tcl web site)

[ems]

On Sat, 2006-08-12 at 07:19 +0100, Martin C. Atkins wrote:
> Actually, it pre-dates spotlight.
Lies. Patent 6,847,959 was filed on January 5, 2000.

[0]
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,847,959.PN.&OS=PN/6,847,959&RS=PN/6,847,959

Re: Re: [9fans] I suppose if there's no other way to do it (a quote from the tcl web site)

[David Leimbach]

On 8/12/06, ems <oat@iinet.net.au> wrote:
> On Sat, 2006-08-12 at 07:19 +0100, Martin C. Atkins wrote:
> > Actually, it pre-dates spotlight.
> Lies. Patent 6,847,959 was filed on January 5, 2000.
>
> [0]
> http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,847,959.PN.&OS=PN/6,847,959&RS=PN/6,847,959
>

The Beagle implementation still pre-dated spotlight by quite a bit
actually IIRC.

Re: Re: [9fans] I suppose if there's no other way to do it (a quote from the tcl web site)

[ems]

On Sat, 2006-08-12 at 08:50 -0700, David Leimbach wrote:
> On 8/12/06, ems <oat@iinet.net.au> wrote:
> > On Sat, 2006-08-12 at 07:19 +0100, Martin C. Atkins wrote:
> > > Actually, it pre-dates spotlight.
> > Lies. Patent 6,847,959 was filed on January 5, 2000.
> >
> > [0]
> > http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,847,959.PN.&OS=PN/6,847,959&RS=PN/6,847,959
> >
> 
> The Beagle implementation still pre-dated spotlight by quite a bit
> actually IIRC.
Lies. No more than Slashdot/Open Source propaganda. Jon beat Apple by 6
hours to presenting it to the public. Apple had a fully working product
by the presitation. Jon Trowbridge only had a preview of his work.
Google Desktop was announced soon after. Thats trends for you....

Re: Re: [9fans] I suppose if there's no other way to do it (a quote from the tcl web site)

[Paweł Lasek]

On 8/12/06, ems <oat@iinet.net.au> wrote:
> On Sat, 2006-08-12 at 08:50 -0700, David Leimbach wrote:
> Lies. No more than Slashdot/Open Source propaganda. Jon beat Apple by 6
> hours to presenting it to the public. Apple had a fully working product
> by the presitation. Jon Trowbridge only had a preview of his work.
> Google Desktop was announced soon after. Thats trends for you....


IIRC Microsoft was talking about this since ca. 1994....

They still haven't implemented it fully with part of it's features
being available in Vista and indexing (disabled by many people and not
that useful anyway) available at least since NT 5.0.

WinFS is available as beta at the moment and IIRC Beagle/Spotlight
still work better without redesigning filesystem :-)

If somebody dug deep enough I think you could find an even older info
about this :-D

-- 
Paul Lasek

Re: Re: [9fans] I suppose if there's no other way to do it (a quote from the tcl web site)

[Russ Cox]

There's no prize for having the idea first if you do anything with it.

Russ

Re: Re: [9fans] I suppose if there's no other way to do it (a quote from the tcl web site)

[Russ Cox]

There's no prize for having the idea first if you don't do anything with it.

Grr.

On 8/12/06, Russ Cox <rsc@swtch.com> wrote:
> There's no prize for having the idea first if you do anything with it.
>
> Russ
>

Re: Re: [9fans] I suppose if there's no other way to do it (a quote from the tcl web site)

[Francisco J Ballesteros]

Isn´t having the idea the prize? :-)
When I think that you guys had all this by the 80s...

On 8/12/06, Russ Cox <rsc@swtch.com> wrote:
> There's no prize for having the idea first if you don't do anything with it.
>
> Grr.
>
> On 8/12/06, Russ Cox <rsc@swtch.com> wrote:
> > There's no prize for having the idea first if you do anything with it.
> >
> > Russ
> >
>
>

Re: Re: Re: [9fans] I suppose if there's no other way to do it (a quote from the tcl web site)

[Anthony Sorace]

On 8/12/06, Russ Cox <rsc@swtch.com> wrote:
> There's no prize for having the idea first if you don't do anything with it.

somebody please tell the PTO.