Multiple file versions -- FLAME ON!!

[gwyn at BRL-VLD.ARPA]

From:      Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn at BRL-VLD.ARPA>

The idea of "UNIX for the masses" was never a good one.  A much better
concept is "UNIX underlying products for the masses".  The standard
UNIX interface was designed to support effective software development,
not to be accessed directly by non computer professionals.  The fact
that secretaries et al. can nevertheless use it to do work is an
accident, and from the resulting confusion about what UNIX "should"
do, a regrettable accident.  Talk to one of the UNIX text processing
users some day and see just how well their model fits what is really
happening; just the other day one of ours told me that she used
"/dev/null" to check for eqn usage errors rather than "checkeq".  (I
finally determined that what she meant was "eqn ... >/dev/null".)

The end user (as opposed to system developer) needs the sort of
facilities that you have been describing.  What we are objecting to
is the imposition of these things on developers, who benefit most
from the original UNIX design goals.  Certainly there were missing
functions in older UNIXes, and there are even some missing from the
newest versions (there will probably always be more things to use
computers for that are anticipated).  However, the way to remedy this
is to carefully design general, powerful solutions rather than just
the first thing that comes to mind.  Research 8th Edition UNIX has
some improvements along these lines, some of which will appear in
publicly-available UNIXes in the near future, but there is yet a
ways to go.

My main point is that "grafting on" features CANNOT maintain the
design integrity; it takes inspired thought comparable to that
put into the original UNIX design to obtain the desired elegance.
Elegance is NOT just an aesthetic matter, but has real practical
benefits (which I have made good use of in past projects).