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From: reggie@dinsdale.nm.paradyne.com (George W. Leach)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.visual,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: metaphor and programming
Message-ID: <6776@pdn.paradyne.com>
Date: 27 Nov 89 17:26:12 GMT
References: <13770@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU> <7000@ficc.uu.net> <1989Nov17.040858.22886@rpi.edu> <1989Nov23.162521.4022@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
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Reply-To: reggie@dinsdale.paradyne.com (George W. Leach)
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In article <1989Nov23.162521.4022@ccu.umanitoba.ca> salomon@ccu.UManitoba.CA (Dan Salomon) writes:

>That's the whole point: UNIX pipes are one dimensional because
>they have to be represented in text.  By having a visual shell
>you could have two dimensional pipes.

   It is the shell that is one dimensional, not the pipe.

>A few TEE programs have been written, that let you send the same output
>two places at once, but multiple standard inputs & outputs would be
>more useful.  For example you may want to take an input file and a
>stream of update commands (two standard inputs), pipe command errors to
>the terminal, a modification list to the printer, and an updated file
>to a post-processing consistency checker (three standard outputs).  One
>of the reasons that UNIX compilers don't provide source listings with
>embedded error messages, is that this would require two standard
>outputs, one for the listing and one for the task image.


     Years ago Marc Rochkind built something at Bell Labs known as the
two dimensional shell (2dsh), which could accomodate nonlinear pipelines.
I forget the details and I don't know whatever became of the idea.



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