Dilwyn Jones wrote:
A couple of questions for the more Linux-minded members of this list, to help me with a QL conversion:
1. What is an RFC?
The "Request For Comment" mechanism does indeed date from the very start of networking. You can probably look up the history in detail somewhere, but it goes roughly like this.
Back then, there weren't all that many "on-line" people, and they started up informally publishing documents with ideas for what "The Internet!" was going to look like. They marked them "Request For Comment". Other uses would then make their comments, which would get incorporated, or not, by the author. Eventually, a document would be refined into something that was really going to happen (or even already had happened). Unfortunately, no one was ever quite sure when to stop. The name "Request For Comment" just stuck.
2. What exactly is an _rc file (presumably like qascade_rc, the runtime control file or something like that?)
Everyone seems to have this M$ Windows "resource" idea. I thought I knew (from way back) that it stood for "run commands", so I did a quick search, and http://www.linux-mag.com/2000-12/start_03.html seems to agree with me.
Possibly exrc is the earliest instance. I think the rc directories came rather a lot later.
--
Lau
http://www.bergbland.info
Get a domain from http://oneandone.co.uk/xml/init?k_id=5165217 and I'll get the commission!
