J.Crowcroft@CS.UCL.AC.UK (Jon Crowcroft) (09/05/90)
>Henry Spenser asked why no-one has ever created a standard library >routine to open a connection. That's something I have wondered >about myself, it seems like a fairly obvious thing to do. But then actually, when i ported the X windows protocol to run over OSI as well as over TCP and DECnet, I did it by writing a small set of of arrays of functions (open, accept, read[v], write[v], close and getpeer which were indexed by the protocol family being used (either connection id type, or address family type) (not a very new idea), and this turned out to be perfectly sufficient functionality to get at adequate protocol service...it is also the flipside of the coin that transport service bridges are feasible... j.