snicoud@ATC.BOEING.COM (Stephen Nicoud) (12/02/89)
Date: Fri, 1 Dec 89 11:12:56 EST
From: Dan Cerys <cerys@bbn.com.ARPANET>
This is a great feature that I'd love to see on the Explorer.
I strongly second the motion.
The right place to do this support is in the pathname system, not in Zmacs.
That way all applications can take advantage of it. Essentially, doing
this would provide a new host-pathname type of UNIX-with-Versions. Since
systems on the Explorer already know how to use versions, everybody is
happy.
It would be more useful if the Explorer dealt with UNIX files in a
similar way to Symbolics. For example, files that would appear on an
Explorer like this:
sys.translations#1
sys.translations#2
sys.translations#3
sys.translations#4
Depending on how you want it configured, they could look like this if
stored on a Unixm:
sys.translations.~1~
sys.translations.~2~
sys.translations.~3~
sys.translations.~4~
or like this:
sys.translations.~1~
sys.translations.~2~
sys.translations.~3~
sys.translations
Although, I believe this only applies when using the NFS File Protocol.
This very powerful feature would correct, IMHO, a deficiency of Unix and
allow Unix filesystems to be treated as first class citizens (from the
Explorer's point of view) with most of the same capabilities of other
filesystems. It would gives us the flexibility to store Explorer files
on Unixms. This frees up disk space on the Explorers. Besides, the
Unixms files are backed up automatically on a regular basis, so I don't
have to worry about that task.
Steve