Re: browser execution

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Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1993 11:04:29 +1200
From: Nathan Torkington <Nathan.Torkington@vuw.ac.nz>
Message-id: <199306292304.AA18510@kauri.vuw.ac.nz>
To: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
In-reply-to: Karl Lehenbauer's message <9306291732.AA10920@NeoSoft.Com>
Subject: Re: browser execution

Karl Lehenbauer writes:

> We are involved in some work on safe Tcl which will become part of
> active email under MIME. [...]
> It would be a good candidate, IMHO, for delivering active HTML messages
> (i.e. programs) that can be executed safely, even though the sender
> isn't trusted.

Something I would like to see is libraries (I don't know if you have
them or not).  They could be specified through MIME, I guess, and
would be a combination of ID and ``place to get them from if you don't
already have them''.  For instance, say I want interactive hypertext,
I could use a set of libraries that have already been written and
debugged, rather than including the same code in every single
interactive hypertext document.

This would lead to:
  -- standardisation of code (a Good Thing).  C is intelligable
     because libc.a provides a common set of ground rules without
     which every program's source would bloat enormously.
  -- local copies of libraries, to avoid repetitive and time-consuming
     delays fetching libraries over a long-haul network for each
     document.
  -- quick boot-strapping.  If a couple of useful libraries for text
     and interactive graphics were available, more users would be
     willing to start the gentle slope of the learning curve.

Nat.