[sw-l] Downloading the IMWA and SSS-1999

[Trevor Jenkins]

On Wed, 8 Dec 2004, Valerie Sutton <sutton at signwriting.org> wrote:

> I think a lot of you may have lost the idea of what the IMWA is....It
> is not meant for small computers or for tiny little software programs.

Dusting on my worn-out Computing Science and IT Consultancy hat for a
moment I wouldn't consider many current home computers to be "small". The
designation of home machines as small computers went away with the release
of Microsoft Windows 95. Once more than 100Mbytes is needeed to get
something approaching sensible response times from an operating system we
are no longer dealing with small systems. And just so people don't think
I'm Microsoft basing, which I am, Apple are going the same way with Mac OS
X.

There is more raw processing power in the systems sitting on people's
desks than was in many of the major multi-user systems of the past. Indeed
it is possible to emulate the hardware/software of the time-sharing system
I was managing in the mid-1980s (a DECsystem-10 running TOPS-10 providing
service to 100 concurrent users) on my Linux-based workstation this email
originates from. Actually I will get about 4 times the raw power of the
original system on this box, which is nothing more than a 300MHz Celeron
box with 198Mb running Linux rather than some version of Microsoft Windows
(for the cognescenti I run X and sendmail on this machine --- both
recognised as major resource hogs --- plus having several OpenOffice.org
windows open continuously --- another resource hog, oh and there's Mozilla
too --- a hog too).

> The IMWA is my way of documenting every symbol in the writing system,
> and it will be getting bigger now, rather than smaller.

Nothing wrong in that. ;-) One would expect it to grow as the notation
develops. What it does need is for applications such as Stephen's to have
an efficent storage method. If the elements of the IMWA is stored as
individual files then the user loses a whole bunch of disk space
unecessarily.

Please may I put that worn-out hat away once and for all. ;-)

Regards, Trevor

<>< Re: deemed!