> 1.  Establish Package.Name as an alternate form of global reference. 

Sounds pretty neat.  As a matter of fact, why not make 'dot'  
notation  generally acceptable for retrieving values from (nested)  
dictionaries and plain objects (via accessors)?  The Package.Name  
would then be just a special case of that mechanism.

> 2.  Packages are represented in memory as instances of  
SystemDictionary.
> 	In our example there would be a global in Smalltalk named  
Thinglab.
> 	In ThingLab there would be an entry named Line.
> 	Methods with a reference named Line would bind to the  
ThingLab Line
> 		if compiled inside of ThingLab -- ie if their class is 
> 		in the ThingLab package, otherwise to the global one. 

What I would *really* like is for the lookup to be dynamic and  
overridable, so that a 'sub-package' can override the references to  
globals of its 'super-package', both the internal ones referring to  
'globals' provided by the package itself and ones 'imported' from  
outside.

Allowing overrides like that should help with the problems you get  
with making versions of sets of cooperating classes.

> 3.  I don't know if we should support arbitrarily long dotted  
references.
> 	What do you think?

Do it.

> 4.  There needs to be a corresponding extension to the  
SystemOrganization,
> and to the System Browsers.
> 	Have you thought about this?
> 	This is what makes me hesitate about arbitrarily deep nesting. 

Do it later?

> 6.  I believe this project will be facilitated by adding a pointer  
from a
> class to its package dictionary.  Believe it or not, this was part  
of the
> intention back in ST-76.  It was called the "system" pointer, but  
it got
> dropped in ST-80 because it hadn't been used yet.

Yes, I agree a back-pointer is just what is needed, although I would  
like the package to be more than just a dictionary.  Another pointer  
I would like to see is for the messager, this could be either in the  
package or the class itself.  With this back-pointer, it should be  
possible to create shared packages that are read-only and integrated  
into the system using only the smallest of hooks.

Marcel