Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!iuvax!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!garcon!mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu!carlson
From: carlson@mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Browser auto-update
Message-ID: <800018@mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 12 Aug 89 03:07:00 GMT
References: <7324@microsoft.UUCP>
Lines: 18
Nf-ID: #R:microsoft.UUCP:7324:mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu:800018:000:762
Nf-From: mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu!carlson    Aug 11 22:07:00 1989


The catch is that **ANY** program could create/destroy files.
I don't know if you have a machine with many users.
The solution is

1. Have EVERY Unix program send an UPDATE message to the window
	server or browser. (Yeah, right!)
1a. Put such code into the open() and creat() library calls.
	OR
2. Change the kernal so that _it_ sends an UPDATE message to 
	the window server EVERYTIME a file is created/destroyed.

Clearly, any method to notify processes of filesystem changes
is going to be messy and consume CPU cycles.  I belive that Multifinder 
on the Mac sort of does this.  Does anyone know the details?
--------------------
Brad Carlson   or 
University of Illinos--Micro Resource Center--NeXT guru