🚀 go-pugleaf

Excuse me please for joining this newsgroup and posting to it in the same day.
I saw a cross-posted description of the patent situation over in 
comp.os.coherent and couldn't help but wanna help.

>In article <9107131607.AA14833@mole.gnu.ai.mit.edu> rms@gnu.ai.mit.edu (Richard Stallman) writes:
>
>   US patent number 4,956,809 covers using a single standard byte
>   ordering for transfer of data between machines whose normal byte
>   ordering is different.
>
>   Unless invalidated (by prior art from mid-1982 or earlier), this patent
>   prohibits the principal means for transfering data between disparate
>   types of computer systems.
>

Hello?  What about the RFC's?????  They outline TCP/IP's network standard
byte ordering for info in it's header fields.  That stuff was all worked out 
in the 70's... if not the 60's.

What about IBM's translation tables inside of MVS that does BIT level ordering
when it does tape I/O (they store their bits on their 9-track tapes backwards.)
I can remember talking about that in as MVS Systems programmers class in 1986.
If memory serves, there was also translation tables for other things like
printer codes that were stored in in IMAGELIB on the SYSRES volume (it has been
a long time since I even thought about and IBM machine... These names could
be off a little.  Ask a local mainframe guru or email me and I can look
thru my old class notes if I can find them.)  Anyway, the point here is that
the SAME problem was delt with in MVS and the place was the IMAGELIB dataset
where the translation tables were stored.

Anyone know when sun's XDR routines were first documented?  I suppose they
would also appear in the RFC's around the time of NFS and thus bee to new, but
perhaps someone knows of a paper on it precluding the 1982 date?

--
! John Winans                     Advanced Photon Source                !
! winans@mcs.anl.gov              Argonne National Laboratory, Illinois !
!                                                                       !
!"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away"-- Tom Waits  !