Although it's aimed more at content publishers, this is what GenericMedia seem to be doing. You send them a master copy in your favourite format, they serve it up in whatever format/bit rate/etc your users actually want. There's more info on it here.
Fast forward to 2007: 6 or 7 years ago the Mac OS was munged into a neat user experience sitting on top of BSD.
If Linux, or some other form of Unix, is still going strong in 7 years, Apple have the perfect opportunity to sell the bit that 90% of people really care about as a layer on top.
If Linux doesn't take over the world, Apple loses nothing: they don't have to take over the world themselves to be successful.
Whatever have other companies been thinking to replace defective products for FREE when they could just downplay the problem long enough for them to become all "old and worn out anyway"?:-P
To be fair though, the 5300s were operating under a special support program anyway (i.e., a free repair-whatever-problem-you-have program that ran longer than the regular warranty deal). This was due to some well publicised defects in this model: failing screen hinges, cracking case plastics, etc. When I sent mine back a couple of years ago they fixed both of these and replaced the motherboard while they were at it.
The intent here is probably just to get people who hadn't really thought about upgrading back into buying new machines.
I've heard that the OS X interface is capable of remote display on any device that can display PDF
Unfortunately this isn't the case - although NeXT (built on top of Display Postscript) did support remote display, this wasn't carried forward into Mac OS X (built on top of Quartz).
One thing, though, you are NOT allowed to open a file based on inode number...
This is the case under Mac OS/Mac OS X as well: the high and low level File Manager APIs don't accept file IDs directly as input, so most apps work with higher-level references to files. The main user of file IDs is the Alias Manager, which wraps them up behind an opaque alias reference.
...because it effectively allows you to bypass directory permissions.
So when you come to open the file, the permissions of the enclosing directory could then be checked before an open was allowed to succeed.
Strangely, the author explain how HFS+ didn't have hard links and how it was very difficult to emulate them using symbolic links... but aliases sound very similar to them.
They're similar, but not the same. Aliases are like a combination of both - they're not just a different name for the target file (main hard/symbolic distinction), but they can still track their target if it's moved/renamed (like hard links).
Also, I don't know if aliases can point to relative paths.
They can. They're normally resolved through file/directory IDs, then a full path as a fallback (where the full path can also contain the address of the machine, so the Alias Manager can find and mount the correct volume if it needs to), but you can also create relative-path aliases at the API level if that's what you need.
My only question about that and the Quesa 3D library is if it's so fast how come they are only using 3/4 of the screen to actually display the game?
Nanosaur was originally written for iMacs with 4Mb of VRAM, hence had to run in 640x480 to have enough space left over for textures (along with the back-buffer and z-buffer needed for rendering). Now that VRAM isn't so scarce, there's no reason why you couldn't increase the size of the rendering window. As to the speed of Quesa (or QD3D): it's a high level toolkit, which sits on top of lower-level APIs like OpenGL. The OpenGL layer is where you spend 80%+ of your time on any given frame, so the overhead of using Quesa is pretty small.
Slashdot Mirror
twinky, the robot, who always said bee-dee-bee-dee-bee-dee
Wasn't that Twiki, from Buck Rogers?
-dair
Although it's aimed more at content publishers, this is what GenericMedia seem to be doing. You send them a master copy in your favourite format, they serve it up in whatever format/bit rate/etc your users actually want. There's more info on it here.
-dair
Sounds good to me.
Sounds even better to me.
Fast forward to 2007: 6 or 7 years ago the Mac OS was munged into a neat user experience sitting on top of BSD.
If Linux, or some other form of Unix, is still going strong in 7 years, Apple have the perfect opportunity to sell the bit that 90% of people really care about as a layer on top.
If Linux doesn't take over the world, Apple loses nothing: they don't have to take over the world themselves to be successful.
-dair
The intent here is probably just to get people who hadn't really thought about upgrading back into buying new machines.
-dair
Tenon are working on "X for OS X", which appears to be exactly that.
-dair
-dair
I've heard that the OS X interface is capable of remote display on any device that can display PDF
Unfortunately this isn't the case - although NeXT (built on top of Display Postscript) did support remote display, this wasn't carried forward into Mac OS X (built on top of Quartz).
-dair
>And does anyone know if Aqua is network transparent like X?
Aqua is the 'theme' on top. But the answer is that no, unfortunately, Quartz (the stuff underneath) does not support network hosting.
-dair
One thing, though, you are NOT allowed to open a file based on inode number...
...because it effectively allows you to bypass directory permissions.
This is the case under Mac OS/Mac OS X as well: the high and low level File Manager APIs don't accept file IDs directly as input, so most apps work with higher-level references to files. The main user of file IDs is the Alias Manager, which wraps them up behind an opaque alias reference.
So when you come to open the file, the permissions of the enclosing directory could then be checked before an open was allowed to succeed.
Strangely, the author explain how HFS+ didn't have hard links and how it was very difficult to emulate them using symbolic links... but aliases sound very similar to them.
They're similar, but not the same. Aliases are like a combination of both - they're not just a different name for the target file (main hard/symbolic distinction), but they can still track their target if it's moved/renamed (like hard links).
Also, I don't know if aliases can point to relative paths.
They can. They're normally resolved through file/directory IDs, then a full path as a fallback (where the full path can also contain the address of the machine, so the Alias Manager can find and mount the correct volume if it needs to), but you can also create relative-path aliases at the API level if that's what you need.
-dair
>The "G" stands for "Glascow"
That would be "Glasgow", with a 'g'.
-dair (who used to live there)
As to the speed of Quesa (or QD3D): it's a high level toolkit, which sits on top of lower-level APIs like OpenGL. The OpenGL layer is where you spend 80%+ of your time on any given frame, so the overhead of using Quesa is pretty small.
-dair (project lead for Quesa)
-dair
>is there anything planned in this direction? Possibly too close to the one about RCS/SCCS. -dair __________________________________________________ _________ (Work) mailto:dair@lightwork.com http://www.lightwork.com/ (!Work) mailto:dair@webthing.nethttp://www.webthing.net/
You can get a QD3D implementation of ElectroPaint at http://www.eblong.com/zarf/stonerview.ht ml.
It wouldn't be terribly difficult to convert it to OpenGL for an xscreensaver module (it's a Mac app at the moment, but GPL).
-dair