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Aucb.672 fa.editor-p utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!C70:editor-people Mon Mar 15 05:26:03 1982

>From RMS@MIT-AI Mon Mar 15 05:23:29 1982 There is a lot of wasted energy going into the design of locking mechanisms that will provide lots of hairy distinctions so that the right thing will always have to happen.

It is better to face the fact that, short of an AI program, no such system is going to be able to represent the knowledge of what would be right to do if so-and-so wants to look at or edit the file, even if the person who set the lock wanted to go to the trouble of thinking all those possibilities out.

Until we have a system which can deduce the right thing to do from an understanding of the goals of the actions involved and their interactions, it is better to let the humans do this. A locking system should simply pass on to one human a message from the other human, when appropriate, such as, "I am working on gross changes to this file and FOO and BAR, and haven't debugged them yet -- RMS", and let the other user decide what he wants to see and do.

One we decide that the locking system is just an advisor, away goes the need for many hairy features intended to enable users to get around them when they are wrong, or control them precisely.

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