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This HTML we're viewing may be runtime-generated on the server, but it's still saved on my machine as one or more files in a temporary folder and then opened by

by kyllo 13y ago

This HTML we're viewing may be runtime-generated on the server, but it's still saved on my machine as one or more files in a temporary folder and then opened by my browser application, is it not? A web browser is really just a fancy, scriptable file viewer. And that's for HTTP--not to mention the other major protocol FTP, the name of which is self-explanatory: File Transfer Protocol.

icebraining 13y ago
This HTML we're viewing may be runtime-generated on the server, but it's still saved on my machine as one or more files in a temporary folder and then opened by my browser application, is it not? No, it's kept as an in-memory structure. Certain representations are serialized and cached to files, yes, but that's just a optimization to reduce network requests; you can disable it without affecting the browser. In particular, "grep -r kyllo ~/.cache/mozilla/firefox/" returns zero results, despite having this post open on my browser. A web browser is really just a fancy, scriptable file viewer. I disagree; it's an hypertext engine, with renderers for multiple media types. That hypertext can be loaded and/or cached from files, but that's an implementation detail that does not define the application. And that's for HTTP--not to mention the other major protocol FTP, the name of which is self-explanatory: File Transfer Protocol. That's not part of the web.
jerf 13y ago
Define "file". Read off from the definition of file whether the WWW is just a set of "files". If you use the UNIX-like definition of file (to say nothing of the Plan 9 definition), which can include dynamically-generated streams such as /dev/random, then sure, the whole web is a set of files. I assume Plan 9 will even serve web sites out of its "filesystem" with the correct poking. If you use the DOS-like definition of a static file (ignoring CON and a couple of other special cases), then, no, the web is not merely a set of fancy static files on disk. Many, many, many things never have a rest representation on disk as a simple file, even if one could theoretically be manifested at a point in time for some particular web page. I sort of feel you're trying to conflate these two distinct definitions, and using the fact that the web is a set of stream-files to assert that the web is nothing but a set of disk-files, but that's equivocation.

by kyllo 13y ago

This HTML we're viewing may be runtime-generated on the server, but it's still saved on my machine as one or more files in a temporary folder and then opened by my browser application, is it not? A web browser is really just a fancy, scriptable file viewer. And that's for HTTP--not to mention the other major protocol FTP, the name of which is self-explanatory: File Transfer Protocol.

icebraining 13y ago

This HTML we're viewing may be runtime-generated on the server, but it's still saved on my machine as one or more files in a temporary folder and then opened by my browser application, is it not? No, it's kept as an in-memory structure. Certain representations are serialized and cached to files, yes, but that's just a optimization to reduce network requests; you can disable it without affecting the browser. In particular, "grep -r kyllo ~/.cache/mozilla/firefox/" returns zero results, despite having this post open on my browser. A web browser is really just a fancy, scriptable file viewer. I disagree; it's an hypertext engine, with renderers for multiple media types. That hypertext can be loaded and/or cached from files, but that's an implementation detail that does not define the application. And that's for HTTP--not to mention the other major protocol FTP, the name of which is self-explanatory: File Transfer Protocol. That's not part of the web.

jerf 13y ago

Define "file". Read off from the definition of file whether the WWW is just a set of "files". If you use the UNIX-like definition of file (to say nothing of the Plan 9 definition), which can include dynamically-generated streams such as /dev/random, then sure, the whole web is a set of files. I assume Plan 9 will even serve web sites out of its "filesystem" with the correct poking. If you use the DOS-like definition of a static file (ignoring CON and a couple of other special cases), then, no, the web is not merely a set of fancy static files on disk. Many, many, many things never have a rest representation on disk as a simple file, even if one could theoretically be manifested at a point in time for some particular web page. I sort of feel you're trying to conflate these two distinct definitions, and using the fact that the web is a set of stream-files to assert that the web is nothing but a set of disk-files, but that's equivocation.