Rick McGowan scripsit:
> You
> just have to design the protocols that have "expectations" so that they don't
> have the particular flaws that lead to waiting forever to see if an umlaut
> is going to arrive before printing an "a" or doing whatever it is they need
> to do.
Once again: this is not a matter of "designed" protocols, it is a matter
of ad hoc ones that were intended to be interpreted by flexible humans,
not inflexible programs. Printing "login:" is not a "protocol" in the
usual sense: it's a prompt intended originally for human beings that
many computers must now process.
> The
> problems persist as long as one is required to deal with host systems that
> can't be programmed.
Exactly. But the "host" need not be "big old iron"; it just has to be
anything you can't control. Little iron runs such programs all the
time --- but that leads directly to the Open Source argument, which
I will not infect this mailing list with.
--
John Cowan cowan@ccil.org
I am a member of a civilization. --David Brin
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:20:53 EDT