Glossary of terms
- @
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A command that provides shell-level access to UnixObjects. @ implements pathname decomposition, type detection, dynamic inheritance and dispatching among other features.
- App
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Short for ‘application program’. The end product in Old Style software development. Refers to a monolithic single purpose executable that links against GUI libraries. Object-oriented techniques, if used, are only evident in the source code; the executable itself does not serve as an object or a method in the system.
In the UnixObjects (New Style) context, the word App is used in a slightly derogatory meaning as this design principle is seen as a dead end.
- id
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An object identifier. In the UnixObjects architecture objects are identified by pathnames. The id term is used to make the distinction that while a normal Unix pathname refers to a file or directory in the file system, a UnixObjects id may contain an unresolvable (tail) part. An id, therefore, can not be resolved by the standard Unix path resolution mechanism but must instead be handled by the UnixObjects lookup and dispatch algorithm.
- New Style
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Or just ‘NS’. A synonym to UnixObjects architecture. Also refers to the philosophy behind UnixObjects.
New Style advocates aggressive factoring of executable programs and combining them together using object-oriented techniques. In this, the first part can be seen as a repurposing of the classic Unix tool approach, while the latter part was introduced in 2008 by UnixObjects. Applying New Style, however, is not necessarily limited to Unix systems.
- Object-oriented
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Organized by containment.
See also: What does object-oriented mean?
- Old Style
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A software development methodology where the end product is a monolithic single purpose executable that links against GUI libraries (see App). Object-oriented techniques, if used, are only evident in the source code; the executable itself does not serve as an object or a method in the system.
See also: New Style
- Orgone
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A software package implementing the UnixObjects architecture. Orgone was originally written by Timo Lehtinen for a private project. A subset of Orgone is available for GNU/Linux for free.
See also: @
- /org
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A subdirectory of the root directory in the Unix name space. The UnixObjects architecture specifies as one of its mandatory requirements that compliant software packages must install all files under the directory /org/vendortag/, where vendortag is a vendor specific perpetually valid moniker.
This requirement stems from the fact that dynamic inheritance and prototype instantiation, among other things, can work reliably only when objects are unambiguously identified by a permanent pathname.
- Unix
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Those operating systems derived from or inspired by the Research Unix systems of the 1970s. Includes commercial Unix systems, Research Unix, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Linux, even Plan 9 and others.
Definition by Rob Pike (source)