Re: [zzdev] :zz,osmic,f3,unix: Could a cell be an inode? [resend]

[Andrew Pam <xanni@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Jul 02, 1998 at 12:49:38AM +0900, Ted Nelson wrote:
> Is the following an Inspiration, or a Half Baked Idea?
> 
> We could make a cell a Unix inode
>  (or in the worst case, a file),
>  and let the fast Unix lookup mechanisms
>  do that work for us.
> 
> Including, possibly, dereferencing a
>  pointer-cell pointing to text.
> 
> I know that the hash database works very well,
>  I'm just wondering if putting the cell mechanism down at a
>  much lower level might have various forms of payoff.

Sure, cells could be references to almost anything - in fact Bek's idea
(of using references to URLs) is similar but more generalised.  Of course,
the more general the reference and the more layers of dereferencing
the slower the performance.  I suggest we adopt Bek's suggestion and
make all cells references to URIs, and define some new URIs as needed
(for OSMIC, for example).  This would allow us to incorporate cells
that point to files or portions of files as you suggested.  This might
also mean a change in the system where the Zigzag data contains only the
links, and the data itself is stored elswhere - similar to Microcosm.

Cheers,
	*** Xanni ***
-- 
mailto:xanni@xxxxxxxxxx                         Andrew Pam
http://www.xanadu.com.au/                       Technical VP, Xanadu
http://www.glasswings.com.au/                   Technical Editor, Glass Wings
http://www.sericyb.com.au/sc/                   Manager, Serious Cybernetics
P.O. Box 26, East Melbourne VIC 8002 Australia  Phone +61 3 96511511