tbray@watsol.waterloo.edu (Tim Bray) (02/13/90)
People aren't convinced that we're straining at the 32-bit limits. davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr) writes: You have to support really large text and database files, but the average application never get a large file by 32 bit standards. wayne@dsndata.uucp (Wayne Schlitt) writes: 32 bits can hold the income in pennies of 99% of companies in the world. very few programs need more than 4 gigabytes in either code or data. Well, here's the electronic text of the Oxford English Dictionary: -r--r--r-- 1 tbray 572728830 Sep 7 18:06 OED Just over 29 bits' worth. And the OED is just the first step in a really comprehensive text database. And there's just no good way to deal with text properly if you have records getting in the way, so you really need per-character pointer granularity. And it's really nice to treat all the text on your computer as one database. And when you get used to having a good text database resource around, you realize they're necessities, not luxuries. Mind you, when we busted through the 16-bit limit, we used tricks like overlays, segmentation, and i+d, to hold back the tide; there are probably luckless people out there to this day writing RSX-11M .ODL files. But the fact is that in the near future, 32 bits will no longer provide the addressing range appropriate to the types of objects with which we routinely deal. History would suggest that this will exert strong pressure in the direction of bigger words. Cheers, Tim Bray New OED Project, U of Waterloo and Open Text Systems, Waterloo, Ont., Canada