> From: Greg Woodhouse <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Reply-To: [email protected] > Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 09:10:26 -0800 (PST) > To: Hardhats <[email protected]> > Subject: [Hardhats-members] A conservative option: MUMPS Standard Library > > I've been thinking about how best to address the various platform > issues that continue to come up on Hardhats. There seems to be a strong > consensus that supporting the standard is the right course, but it is > equally clear that there are many small detailss in which MUMPS > platforms differ (details that Kernel tries to encapsulate), and > fundamental pieces of functionality (like UDP support, asynchronous IO, > etc.) that are not available at all. > > Many languages (such as C or Haskell) address this issue through a > standard library. Those of you familiar with C, for example, will know > that printf() and scanf() are not part of the C language, but they are > included in the standard library. I propose that we define a standard > library that is independent of the existing standard, and that we > include a simple syntactic extension (say S X=$|OPEN(...) to call OPEN > from the standard libary) to provide a consistent binding. We could > perhaps call the pair MUMPS 1.1 and MUMPS Standard Library 1.1. An > important beinefit to this approach is that it would allow for code > that is optimized for a particular platform (e.g., in the area of job > control) while remaining standard. > > === > Gregory Woodhouse <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
... .... ..... ...... Greg..... Is the VistA KERNEL an example of what you have in mind? What, if any, are the distinctive characteristics of the library you propose that are not present in the VA KERNEL implementation of platform independent services? Moreover, why push these solutions down into the 'language' level of abstraction? Would it not be wiser to create a HIGHER level of abstraction in which these services reside, and where the generality of these services can have a wider scope than just within the MUMPS (sic) context? I prefer thinking that attempts to cast the problem at a level that makes the next solution, the last solution needed for the foreseeable future, and perhaps beyond. Regards, Richard. ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Do you grep through log files for problems? Stop! Download the new AJAX search engine that makes searching your log files as easy as surfing the web. DOWNLOAD SPLUNK! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7637&alloc_id=16865&op=click _______________________________________________ Hardhats-members mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
