🚀 go-pugleaf

Submitted-by: davecb@nexus.yorku.ca (David Collier-Brown)

geoff@tyger.East.Sun.COM (Geoff Arnold @ Sun BOS - R.H. coast near the top) writes:
>Maybe we should just define a printing API. Nail down a really
>straightforward interface (just half a dozen calls or so), then divvy
>up the work to create a SunOS shared lib for Solaris 2.x, plus one for
>SunOS 4.1.x, a DLL for MS Windows, a static lib for BSD386/386bsd (and
>linux?), one for Ultrix etc. Thoughts?

  I'd like to follow the implied RFC model a bit closer and define a
protocol.  You know, like ``first you open the file, then read or write
for a while, then close''.
  A little more formally, `` open [read*|write]* [seek [write*|read]] close''.

  An API is necessary and about two thirds of sufficient.  A protocol is
odd-loking, but sufficient.  To make it more palatable, you could easily
include a call interface in a common language.
  The advantage of doing the extra work is in making any ordering, temporal
effects and prerequiesites explicit.  This leads to easy implementation of
programs using the interface.

--dave (who is notably lazy, and so goes to great lengths
	to avoid future work) c-b
-- 
David Collier-Brown,  | davecb@CCS.YorkU.CA | lethe!dave
72 Abitibi Ave.,      | 
Willowdale, Ontario,  | York postmaster and
CANADA. 416-223-8968  | occasional sendfail(8) consultant.


Volume-Number: Volume 30, Number 38