🚀 go-pugleaf

> Uh, I *REALLY* Don't think compress=lzw/packbits/etc.  That
> would be totally retarded, not to mention totally unuseable on
> an '030 and damn near it on an '040.  I would gather compressed
> = compacted in that the holes in the swapfile are reused more
> wisely and the paging system tries to keep the swapfile to a
> minimum ... 

Uh, wrong.  According to NeXT at NeXTworld Expo the 'swaptimizer'
would actually compress individual pages.  Beta 3.0 releases will
do this by default ONLY on 8MB RAM machines.  Holes in the
swapfile ARE reused in 2.x.  The problem is that pages at the end
of the swapfile allocated by, say, the Workspace Manager or the
Window Server keep the swap from being truncated.  They need to
be able to intelligently MOVE pages in the swapfile (logically,
not necessarily physically).  Tough problem and still unsolved in
3.0.


> This growing rumor is totally unfounded and technically silly
> IMNSHO.

It actually makes sense since:

1) A task that is swapping is blocked.
2) The Window Server is the most likely task to swap.
3) The Window Server is not threaded.
4) All NeXT apps block pending replys from the Window Server on a
   regular basis.

What NeXT really needs to do is thread the window server!
(Assuming that only one thread in a task is blocked during
swapping... which could be patently untrue.  Anybody know for
sure?).

Blake