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Re: [zzdev] Re: Driver, take me home

On Fri, Oct 02, 1998 at 03:39:04AM +0900, Ted Nelson wrote:
> -- the DRIVER level, huh?
> 
> Now honestly, Andrew, is that what most people think of
>  when they think of an operating system ?-)

That may not be what people think of, but it's an essential part of any
operating system nonetheless.  Without hardware drivers the hardware
wouldn't operate, whether people are thinking about them or not.

Any computer operating system must include some mechanism to access,
control and manage the system resources and also provides APIs which
present some virtuality to applications.  Some operating systems can even
support multiple OS "personalities", where the APIs of other operating
systems are also supported and thus applications written to those APIs
can be executed.

Zigzag is a particular virtuality (for data structuring) and thus could
be included at this level of an operating system.  However, that doesn't
make Zigzag a complete OS in itself.

> I think we have been driven to agreement.

I think we were in agreement all along and just didn't know it.  :-)

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