From: "Colin-Stewart Bridge Deady" csbdeady@mythicz.u-net.com
Date: 18 Sep 99 11:52:33 +0000
Subject: [KOSH] Summary 25 to go with 26
To: kosh-general@iconimaging.net
Reply-To: kosh-general@iconimaging.net
As promissed here is summary 25 to go with 26 so we can remember what
was going on in June...
-Bridge
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http://www.mythicz.u-net.com | DT-MUD:sunsite.auc.dk:4242
Amigan | Vegan | KOSHan - Go for a swim in the object sea,
http://www.gpwebb.freeserve.co.uk/kosh/index.html
Storm of the Eye RPG GUI-PBEM http://www.2bp.com/
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KOSH [Kommunity Orientated Software Hardware]
Weekly Summary
Week Commencing: 12th June 1999
Number: 025
Mailing List: kosh-general
In the mailing list this week, the following items were discussed. Please do
not email the scribe regarding any of these topics, it is not his job to answer
these questions but merely to report the topics of conversation. If you have
any queries about this summary, please email ben@kosh.net, stating the Summary
Number, and Mailing List Name, and he will try to answer your queries.
a)
Subject: Community involvement in Linux - an example for KOSH?
Summary of debate: Linux stresses community involvement and feedback. See
http://www.kde.org - from the website can be seen where KOSH
could go in terms of feed back mechanisms (documentation,
FAQ, wish list, bug reports, etc).
b)
Subject: KOSH Installation
Summary of debate: It was pointed out that KOSH being easy to install and
working first time will present a good first impression to a
user. It was also mentioned that subsequent usage and
alteration of the system should also maintain the good
impression.
c)
Subject: Second User Survey Draft
Summary of debate: The KOSH Survey WG released the second version of its User
Survey Questionnaire. Changes incorporated included an
additional section on disabilities and a note that personal
questions are completely optional and various other
amendments.
See the email from Greg Webb (greg@gpwebb.freeserve.co.uk)
date 14/06 and entitled "[KOSH] Second survey draft" for the
full text.
This again generated a large number of replies with many
constructive comments on the survey. Even though the survey
is developing very well a number of areas such as the
personal questions section were felt in need of further
development. Even so, a big thanks to all the hard work that
the Survey WG have put in to this project.
One key point for the future is that there will most likely
be a "Developers Survey" and therefore the one we are
creating at the moment does not need to cover everything.
However we do note that developers are users and vice versa.
I won't detail all the different comments on the second
draft as I'm sure the Survey WG will be taking their own
notes and I don't want to take up the entire summary with
it. If you're interested in the work of that group please
feel free to get involved!
c)
Subject: Volunteers to translate the survey to other languages.
Summary of debate: As well as Thomas Jensen offering to do a Danish translation
of the survey, Philippe 'Elwood' Ferucci has volunteered to
do a French version. Thanks to both of you.
If anyone else would be able to translate the Survey into
other languages when it is completed please would they make
themselves known to kosh-general@kosh.net
d)
Subject: Deadlocking in KOSH
Summary of debate: The following questions were posed:
"How will Deadlock (resource circularity, mutual exclusion,
hold&wait) be dealt with? In current OSes it is not a
serious problem because there are not many places it can
occur - but in a sea of objects all offering services, the
possibility for deadlock must increase 1000 (or a million?)
fold... [Without this] KOSH...won't work for more than a few
minutes before the entire system freezes up solid under
heavy load".
Apparently Unix ignores deadlock and hopes it will go away,
working on the grounds that it does not happen all that
often. Hopefully a better solution will be found in KOSH?
There are plenty of ways to prevent deadlocks from ever
ocurring by being careful about how you hand out resources
and checking with process what resources they could
conceivably need.
Alternatively getting rid of "hold & wait" just like in
current filing systems could be the way to solve this. The
OS can be set up so that, if a process wants some resources,
it has to give up others.
A deadlocking object in the resource manager was proposed.
e)
Subject: Atari computers and MiNT
Summary of debate: It was mentioned that those using Atari computers now use
MiNT which has multitasking and is POSIX compliant. See
http://www.altos.org.uk/mint/index.html which has a guide to
FreeMiNT. MiNT is a hybrid of Unix and TOS. Perhaps this has
some ideas that are relevant to KOSH.
f)
Subject: KOSH website location
Summary of debate: Just in case you missed it, the most up-to-date version of the
website is currently at http://www.rdg.ac.uk/~ssu97gw/kosh/
It should move to kosh.net/ soonish.
g)
Subject: Developing users
Summary of debate: In reference to the User Survey it was mentioned that
developers and users are often the same people. If we could
make it so that in KOSH every user could behave as a
developer at any time we would make the system much more
accessible. We would thus avoid creating an unnatural
separation and scare people into a division between the two.
We must be careful not to scare off people who just want to
be users.
h)
Subject: EPOC32
Summary of debate: The Psion 5 keyboard being nice to type on compared to other
palmtops was mentioned and this generated a comment that
EPOC32 has some nice things in it that KOSH may like to look
at (scribe's note: presumably EPOC32 is an OS and not a
keyboard though).
i)
Subject: KOSH FAQ
Summary of debate: "Our Greg" has asked he could have some questions to put
into the KOSH FAQ please. Oh and Frequently given answers
would be nice as well.
j)
Subject: Sheep and #HHHHHH
Summary of debate: There was lots of discussion on sheep and dodgy HTML code
involving #HHHHHH which gives lots of interesting results
depending on where you see it - oh and watching the Simpsons
when one should be working on one's studies was also
mentioned... and that's all I'm saying about this:P
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