[cap-talk] "Same" key

[Jed Donnelley]

At 09:51 AM 2/7/2007, David Hopwood wrote:
>Mark S. Miller wrote:
> > David Hopwood wrote:
> >
> >> I'm afraid I don't have much time for anyone who tries to understand a
> >> concept in terms of just one implementation approach. (In the case of
> >> dynamic method dispatch, there are at least three approaches, of which
> >> v-tables are a special case of one [*].)
> >
> > First, Bill himself understands all these concepts quite well.
>
>I may not have expressed myself well here; that isn't what I was attempting
>to say (although I don't think Bill would claim to be an expert on the
>implementation of dynamic dispatch in programming languages).
>
>My point was that Bill's post seemed to say that we should be basing our
>terminology on the viewpoint of people who do try to understand concepts in
>terms of particular implementations. I strongly disagree with that. The
>obj-cap model is intended to be applicable to both capability languages
>and capability operating systems (and hybrids of the two), independent of
>implementation.

And objects across networks please, let's not forget that area of
applicability - which I believe may be the most important (it's
certainly the most global) in the long run.  Of course a DCCS/Mach
or vat sort of extension of OS capabilities would seem to just extend
the OS objects and with them their terminology to the network.
However, I believe that at the network level people will be more
likely to 'see' such objects (e.g. like Widewords:

https://wideword.net/doc/i%2Bej6NZzbDWtc2k444Nk%2FQ%3D%3D
[which I now notice is 431 days old and still nicely supported...]

), so the terminology at that level may be particularly important
in terms of how it maps to common language.

>As far as I can see, it already is, and so is its terminology.

That seems to be what we're matching up here.

--Jed http://www.webstart.com/jed/