'Newbie' questions

[Aaron Bingham <abingham@xxxxxx>]

Hi,

Well, I'm probably not the typical newbie, but newbie I am.  Xanadu
only emerged from the background noise for me a couple of days ago.  I
started looking seriously at Xanadu after playing with CritSuite
(http://crit.org), in the hopes that it would help solve some of my
frustrations with the Web.  (Answer: maybe, sometimes)

The more I read about Xanadu and play with Udanax Green, the more I am
convinced that the world *needs* this.  Xanadu (the idea) solves many
of the problems with computing that have troubled me deeply.  Even a
'personal edition' would be extremely valuable for me, though the
complete networked version would of course be worth much more.

Since I think this is such a good thing, I am somewhat perplexed that
the project has recieved so little public attention and corporate
backing.  In any case, I have a number of questions I hope someone can
answer.  If they're already answered somewhere, please just point me
there.


* Is Green architechtually ready to 'be' Xanadu, or does it have
  fundamental limitations that require a new effort (perhaps an
  existing one)?

* What limitations of the Green design was Gold intended to fix?

* Why is it important that ZigZag and Xanadu be integrated?  ZigZag is
  undoubtedly cool--I've played with Gzz a bit--but is it worth
  delaying the deployment of Xanadu to redesign it in terms of ZZ?

* Where can I read about the distributed aspects of Xanadu?  E.g. how
  the enfilade distributes, how caching works, how micro-payments
  interact with caching, etc.

* The Udanax Green back end can supposedly store any type of data, but
  how can the front end determine the type of a document, since the
  back end does not seem to store any type information?

* How would multi-media documents--here meaning those containing any
  two distinct types of data, such as text and graphics--be
  implemented?  Must they be constructed from separate documents (in
  the Green sense) using transclusions, or is there another mechanism?


-- 

Aaron Bingham
abingham@xxxxxx

P.S. It's snowing heavily outside.  Come on weather, get a clue!  It's
April!