[movitz-devel] Object sharing between processes

[Peter Minten]

Janis Dzerins wrote:

> In yet another words, if we want to make something better, we *must* 
> talk in kinda meta level, not in terms of current OSes and their 
> concepts.  I think lispniks are quite used to discussions in meta-level :)

If I understand you correctly you mean that we first have to develop an abstract
vision of the system before diving into the details. In that respect it might be
best to make lists of what the system should and what it shouldn't do.

I'll start with a couple of my points:
* The system should treat the user with respect, as an intelligent, thinking,
being capable of making decisions. This means not treating the user like a baby
(if you design for dumb users, you end up with dumb users).
* The system should assist the user at the users request by providing good and
concise help.
* The system should not be interruptive whenever it can be avoided. The elegance
of the CLI is that you don't have to worry about the focus moving to another
window which causes your ENTER to have a different meaning, it should be
possible to have this advantage in a graphical environment too, something along
the lines of taskbar buttons changing color to signal that user interaction is
required.
* The system should isolate the user from the details of the implementation of
resources (see below for what I mean with resources), unless the user
specifically requests detailed information and has the right to access this.
* The system should, to the highest reasonable extent, be secured against
virusses and crackers.
* The system should be admin-friendly, meaning that it should be easily
managable, and should be open for changes if the admin desires it.
* The system should be hacker-friendly, it should provide good hacking tools and 
the internal API should be well documented.

Resources are a vague idea of how to replace files. A resource is something like
an object that you can use for input and output of data of some kind and that
can have properties. The idea is that you could simply create a resource, set
some properties and _let the system figure out where it goes_. For example a
configuration resource could be created by making a new resource with it's
configuration property set to t and it's persistent property set to t.

Greetings,

Peter

PS: To whom it concerns: 'http://www.il.fontys.nl/~silvernerd/harddisk.lisp'
updated, fixed a few bugs in addressing and added 48 bits addressing.