New Year's eve and weird transput ideas - request for comment or at least laughter

[chris hermansen]

Good evening and happy new year.

I'm writing a document about Algol 68 transput, mostly for myself but of
course I'm happy to share because I fear more not getting feedback than
being insulted for my poorly thought-out ideas.

Anyway, I've come to the point in the document where I'm comparing the Java
"transput" model to the Algol 68 transput model.  I feel this is a fair
comparison since Java harks back to C and C harks back to Algol 68.

I believe there is a fair correspondence between Algol 68 Book and
java.io.File (though the concept of directories, network connections etc
etc were perhaps glossed over in Algol 68 or perhaps unanticipated /
unknown.  At bottom, Book is all about expressing backfile metadata in
Algol 68; java.io.File is all about expressing operating system file data
in Java.  So there's that.

I also believe there is a fair correspondence between Algol 68 Channel and
java.io.FileDescriptor (and I think we can thank - or blame - Stephen
Bourne for this).

But when I come to Algol 68 File... wow, here there is a profusion of Java
conceptual frameworks... but wait does a picture emerge from this
profusion?  I think so.

Algol 68 File covers both input and output and both binary and character.
Java splits this all up; for example java.io.FileReader and
java.io.FileWriter take on the file-related issues that Book doesn't
delegate to File (ie. actual reading and writing of characters).
java.io.BufferedReader and java.io.BufferedWriter deal with line-oriented
streams of characters.  And so on.

So... I feel I am at a bit of a point where I could go one way or another.
In one direction, I could futz around to fit "modern" character and binary
I/O into the Algol 68 model; in the other, I could futz around to fit Algol
68 format stuff onto "modern" character I/O and look at binary I/O
separately.

I'm not asking for feedback - or maybe I am?  But I have real doubts about
the overall utility of Book, as a hidden meta-model of backing files on
systems that interest few or none at this point in time (c.f. Marcel's
comments in the Genie documentation), vs the residual utility - which seems
to me actually kind of significant - of Algol 68 format on top of a more
current "streams of characters" approach to life.

Now it's time to go and bake some potatoes!

-- 
Chris Hermansen · clhermansen "at" gmail "dot" com

C'est ma façon de parler.
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