Re: hidden buffers for async

[Nic Ferrier]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

>     The number of buffers would be 1:1 with the number of files being
>     downloaded. Aggregating the data is the problem I was trying to avoid.
>     Because the downloads all finish at different times it makes sorting
>     the data difficult.
>
> When you say "sorting the data", do you mean that literally?  

No.


> What I would think of doing is simply looking thru the data
> assembling the contents that add up to one file, and saving it out
> when it is complete.

The advantage of multiple buffers is that the downloaded files can be
viewed straight away, with no further copying. Some files could even
be viewed *while* they were still downloading. A bit like a browser
does with image files.



>     I agree that downloading a lot of files will be silly. Perhaps I will
>     set up a pool of 20 or so buffers for downloads and block or error
>     when the pool is exhausted.
>
> That should work, if it is ok to do only 20 transfers in parallel.
> It should block, not error, when all are in use.

Why?

If this code were an elisp library I think I would expect it to
error... and then user code could choose to block on repeated calls
with a time delay.

Wouldn't that be better?


(Sorry, this is an important question to me, since I am going to
implement this code).


Nic