Lament [Sort-of-Re: es decompression hack ]

[steve@endgame.gsfc.nasa.gov]

> > If I understand correctly, the GNU os, being built on top of Mach 3.0,
> > will allow exactly this sort of thing, cleanly and securely.

> Apollo did this years ago.  It was great, and the built a wonderful
> source maintenance system on top of it.

Sadly, Apollo did a lot of great things that seem to have been lost
or forgotten along the way.  I guess that's what happens when you're
ahead of your time... 

The "decompression hack" is supported in SR10.4.  If you compress a file 
and give it a object type of "compress" it will be expanded for you when 
opened.  For those not in the know, the "object type" is a characteristis
of entities in Apollos file system.  It bears no relation to the usual
Unix-oid meaning of "type" being represented as, say ".Z".  Thus, no
naming conventions have to be fiddled with.

Boy, do I miss my Apollos... I've been `demoted' to least common denominator
computing on Suns again. :-(  

Steve