From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
From: Anssi Porttikivi <app@my-deja.com>
Message-ID: <92f7d0$2n3$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
References: <20001224021200.5227D199DD@mail.cse.psu.edu>
Subject: Re: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9
Date: Tue,  2 Jan 2001 17:42:38 +0000
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 410c47c6-eac9-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025


> i've tried mothra and charon, and
> neither satisfies me.  there's
> got to be a better way than
> the netscape and ie model,

I've been thinking this for a long time too. My best bet would be not
to think about "browsing" remote "media", but just executing Dis code
remotely.

If the Dis code is a remote or pseudo-remote stub that reads remote
HTML trough (a pre-mount required) local /gethttp and pushes it to
local /renderhtml, then fine. You actually opened a URL in a local
browser. If it does something completely different, fine.

What we need is a standard way for for listing and addressing remote
Dis-objects, getting information of them, categorizing them, executing
them in various standard file system mount contexts, asking for various
media and serialized data representations of them as output channels,
and controlling them with standard input channel configurations.

And this system should have a standard mapping of URLs to special
legacy class of Dis-pseudo-objects, i.e. http accessible html files
masked by Dis code stubs, just like Web browsers can access gopher-
objects with URL-references.

Of course we first need the legacy functionality of /gethttp
and /renderhtml with respect for real life production class
implementation of Internet Explorer idiosyncracies, bells and whistles.
We can pretty much forget about other browser compatibility, to make
the implementation a little more manageable.

Start with porting IE, if Microsoft allows you. They might. They have
an interest in Inferno. They were a beta tester. They had negotiations
with Lucent. They could still buy Inferno, which would save the world.
If you can't get IE ported, port Opera. Forget Charon and Mothra, they
are toys.


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