dillon@CORY.BERKELEY.EDU (Matt Dillon) (12/07/87)
Really big stuff I would like to see (not in priority order): -Remove all BCPL code, even if it requires making some things (which dwell deep in BCPL) incompatible. -Keep seglists and other visible BCPLisms for compatibility (bletch). Keep current process oriented devices but add the ability to handle requests syncronously (if possible)... for instance, if a block is cached there is no need to do two context switches to retrieve it. -Add a Fast file system (everybody's wish) -Add a domain based virtual object system. What I have in mind works with or without an MMU, and simply allows those people with fast mass storage to specify SWAP directories/maximum Kbytes. Those programs using virtual objects would be able to say when they need the object and when they don't, then the system would swap out unused objects (even include a byte to allow a highly efficient LRU algorithm) to disk or any other disk-like device. The objects would take little overhead (4 bytes best case) and be useable anywhere from line-buffers for an editor (read: no limit to file size) to fully named permanent (disk based) blocks for a database. The implications are staggering, especially if you allow code and data segments to be swapped out! -Add support for multi-bitplane fonts and spline based fonts, so we can: -Add support for high resolution printer graphics by making a postscript front-end standard (but not in ROM). -Matt