dvfs api and toolkits

[Sean Middleditch]

On Sat, 2005-04-09 at 18:05 +0000, Nate Nielsen wrote:
> Sean Middleditch wrote:
> > For file systems like HTTP, we can't actually seek in a file.  We have
> > to reopen the file at a new location.  
> 
> Which is a relatively quick and painless operation.

It's not that quick or painless in many cases.  You have to reconnect
and rerequest the document, and there's a possibility that regenerating
the document will be expensive or that the particular document just
doesn't support byte range requests.

> 
> > Would there be a problem with the
> > file possibly changing under us?  Could we potentially detect that?
> 
> Yes, in HTTP you use ETag, Modified-Date and perhaps other lesser known
> methods.

OK.  And once we detect it, what are we supposed to do about it?  Return
an error?  Just ignore it and let the developer get what is essentially
going to be corrupted data?

-- 
Sean Middleditch <elanthis at awesomeplay.com>