On Feb 11, 2005, at 11:29 AM, Cees de Groot wrote:

> What probably didn't help, either, was that VW has class categories, 
> parcels, packages, namespaces, and these all are largely independent 
> from each other. This allows you to create a real mess...

On Feb 12, 2005, at 4:47 PM, Lex Spoon wrote:

> Cees's comment about all the different parcels, categories, etc. is
> illuminating already.  I've only messed with VW a little bit, and I 
> have
> yet to even sort out what all of those things *are*....

Definitely.  It's been a while since I used VW, and I remember what 
class categories, parcels, and namespaces are, but now I'm not sure 
about "packages".  Are "parcels" merely the binary version of 
"packages"?  Someone refresh my memory.

After reading this, I'm feeling better about PackageInfo "taking over" 
class categories.  I'm not sure it's worth keeping packages and class 
categories orthogonal.  Class categories just plain aren't that useful 
if you have packages, which end up forming a similar (but not 
identical) categorization.  In other words, I'm wondering if class 
categories are eventually headed for the dumpster.

> It sounds,
> though, like maybe namespaces are *too* orthogonal?  Maybe, say, each
> category should correspond to a namespace?

Yeah, that might make sense.

I know there have been raging arguments in the past about whether 
namespaces should be orthogonal to packages, I haven't formed an 
opinion on that.

But I'd say we definitely don't want to have all three orthogonal 
concepts in Squeak -- class categories, packages and namespaces... 
let's have two at most.

- Doug