amiga-news.de
KOSH summary 25 - 18.07.1999


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


-----------------------------------------------------------
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/


-----------------------------------------------------------
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

© amiga-news.de 18.09.1999
Home