CORBA's not boring yet. / XML in an OS?

[James Tauber]

>Anyhow, this naturally makes me wonder - could XML and related ideas
>like XSL have a place in an operating system?  Where would they fit in?
>KDE and Gnome could be great playgrounds for trying something like this
>out.

For a while now, I've been thinking what an OS (or more likely shell) would
look like if it took Unix's "everything as a file" to "everything as an XML
element".

A system would be a single XML "uberdocument" (physically, separate
entities, including unparsed for any non-XML files on the system but
logically, the one XML document). Applications (which would themselves be
nodes in the element tree) would operate on other nodes in the element tree.

There would be an application, for example, that got mail via POP or IMAP,
represented it in XML and then attached it a particular point in the
uberdocument. XSL could be used to sort the mail. XSL would also be used to
view the mail.

It's XML for the sake of it, but I think it would be fun to try out.

James



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