OS-XML was: Re: CORBA's not boring yet. / XML in an OS?

[Jack Park]

Now, THIS seems worth talking about, even trying.  

Jack Park

At 11:49 AM 2/8/99 +0100, you wrote:
>James Tauber wrote:
>
>> >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".
>
>Now this is interesting.
>
>>
>>
>> A system would be a single XML "uberdocument"... Applications ... 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.
>>
>
>Great ideas.  I can see that this would just follow the unix philosophy,
and could actually be
>useful:  Just like how today, anyone can use the unix command line tools
to pipe together
>small apps to form "new" app/filters, in this XML/OS, someone could use
XML/XSL parsers/apps
>to connect and filter XML to create new apps and filters.
>
>The myriad of programs that operate and manipulate XML could manipulate
any OS object, program
>or data.  For example, the IBM Alphaworks "Tree Diff" (a Java program that
generates "diff"
>info between two XML documents) can be applied to anything stored in the
OS, in the same way
>that the conventional diff can operate on any text file.
>
>>
>> It's XML for the sake of it, but I think it would be fun to try out.
>>
>
>Absolutely, but I'd also bet that some convincing arguments could be made
for real advantages
>of this.
>
>- Robb
>
>
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