Re: PIPI (Parsed Input Process Initiator) -- another silly proposal?
On Wed, 26 Jul 2000, Colin Watson wrote:
> I don't see what user interfaces have to do with standard input and
> streams, particularly (at least not any user interface that differs
> across platforms), nor do I really see how this helps portability. I
> think you can pipe streams across network connections easily enough with
> current mechanisms, and since said mechanisms are composed from the
> normal shell-based ways of initiating network connections I think
> they're much easier to understand than yet another syntax would be.
Sorry, I think I have not been clear enough. I will use now
examples. Imagine a simple stereo audio player. It needs to have two
channels of audio data at the same time (synchronised). Now the
application requests the two streams (named, for instance, "chan_l" and
"chan_r") from its shell. Then the shell could pipe "chan_l" from filter
1, and "chan_r" from filter 2. Imagine filter 1 reads from file, and
filter two generates the output. Now imagine you want to port this
application to another platform. What do you do? Recomplie it for the new
hardware and use the same source. The application would just run under a
shell for the new platform. Moreover, if you port filter 1 to the new
platform, you get the same file format you used on the first platform. In
addition you could specify a new filter for the new platform (e.g. because
another file format is used under it). And would do this all with the same
source of the core application.
Hope you now know,
Pavel
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