Re: URL respitrory

[Nat Friedman <ndf ALEPH1 MIT EDU>]

On Wed, Sep 30, 1998 at 11:14:20PM +0200, Liss Svanberg wrote:
> Nat Friedman<nat@nat.org> wrote in his proposal, among others:
> > The idea is to store URLs like in a database:
> 
> Why store it like in a database?
> Why not *in* a database?

Of course, storing it "like" in a database doesn't preclude storing it
in a database ("Guys like me?  Hey, I'm a guy like me!"). :-)

> Sounds like an ordinary, general database engine, accessed through a
> CORBA interface.

That sounds like a good way of implementing the stuff I was talking
about, with the small reservation that I don't know how you would
store the hierarchy stuff in the database.

I wrote that thing not because I think some special code needs to be
written to handle archiving URLs, but because I wanted to try to get
some vertical-thinking going in the GNOME community.  There is a lot
of horizontal application development -- a new terminal program, new
calculators, new graphing applications, new file managers, etc -- but
a dearth of innovation.

Miguel has addressed this issue at least once, making the point that
once GNOME has a solid base of software, it will be an excellent
starting off point for innovation.  It is a good point, and,
naturally, these are not mutually exclusive goals.  There is a lot of
momentum behind GNOME, and it will be nice when we have a good
launching pad to develop new, exciting things in addition to the
standard applications.

So one way to innovate is to integrate, and CORBA gives us a powerful
way of doing this.  Making URL archiving and management
intertwingled[1] with GNOME would be nice, for example.

Best wishes,
-Nat

[1] Recommended reading:
	http://www.mozilla.org/blue-sky/misc/199805/intertwingle.html