Doing it better 1999-08-02 d
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> > That sounds like one idea. I'm beginning to think, based on my recent
> > work, that we should do something rather wierd.
>
> In that case, we should also do something rather normal. One approach that
> attracts me is to have a normal Forth environment in parallel with the
> rest, built on my Forth-like base. This is a nice standard thing, and also
> is really easy to build (even better, I've done it before) so shouldn't
> distract too much from the wierdness. Rather than compiling Forth into
> your world, it would diverge at the VM level, but my framework for VMs
> is plenty open enough to allow this, either as two separate VMs or as the
> same one with two sets of instructions.

I agreed that we should have several VMs, didn't I? One issue worth
studying: The Interaction Net approach only allocates memory 32 bytes at a
time, which could be made very efficient, but not if you want to recover
the memory in large chunks afterwards.

> > Implementing it is much easier than implementing a Mite-like system,
>
> How's that? Is it just that nodes are really easy to compile, along the
> lines you gave before? Seems like it, from what you say below.

Precisely. We have a well-defined form to attack, and we can choose the
best implementation of that form on each processor.

> implement it. Along the lines of the new Amiga, I think we should pick a
> standard, simple hardware configuration (something like Pentium
> instruction set, PCI bus, IDE disk, VESA graphics, PS/2 keyboard and
> mouse) which applies to almost everyone's computer but lets us strip out
> 90% of the drivers.

But let other people use different drivers if they want, because that is
the whole point. Right?


Another point: people will be interested in a cut down Linux distribution
as a base for other OSes. Especially if we do the work necessary to
provide the same abstraction layer for a Java style piggy-back OS on top
of Windows, Mac OS and a full Linux. I think the ability to run our stuff
stand-alone or piggy-back is really nice, especially for development, and
we should publish that part as a separate product.

Alistair