lin-club  

Re: 'r2l' continuation

mulix
Sat, 07 Jul 2001 17:34:28 -0700

On Sun, 8 Jul 2001, guy keren wrote:

> > at first i thought of using mmap, but if we use mmap, as guy has
> > mentioned, we cannot know that when a file has been erased. so i took
> > things to the next logical conclusion, shared memory.
>
> what? shared memry now? you have any idea how problematic usage of shared
> memory is? also, you cannot delete a shared memory page if any process has
> it attached, so you cannot rely on its existance - only on its contents.

right. so what?

> you'll also have problems if you want many copies of biditext in memory,
> each usign a different shared memory segment - OSes limit the number of
> shared memory segments that can exist (OS-wise) at any given time.

i need two bytes of shared memory, and one is enough if i care to use
bits instead of bytes. i will check what's the limit on linux, but i
doubt it will be relevant.

> its hard to clean up shared memeory segments, since you have to explicitly
> erase them.

so?

> > comments? i'm in favor of trying the shm approach, falling back to files
> > if it doesnt work out.
>
> if you wish to make a private version of the library with shared memoery -
> do so.

i will.

> but first - release a version that does the simple thing we asked
> for - using files, and using tzafrir's hack (file size) to check for bidi
> mode.

please, guy, the simple version you want is released and has been
released since 05:22 on july 4th. it has the 'base biditext' support,
and although it currently uses open/read/write, the interface is set
and will remain the same no matter what method we choose.

> then we could start working on ther others parts (putting the lib
> into biditext, and into r2l programs) and you can meanwhile play with it.

i will put out right now a new version with the file size hack. i will
put out a shm version when i write it.

> please, lets be focused on having something working in 3.6 weeks from
> now..

please specify the next steps...

-- 
mulix
http://www.advogato.com/person/mulix

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