Hi!

> Göran Krampe wrote:
>> I agree with the "on its own merits" of course. The point of noticing
>> Croquet "diversions" from regular Squeak is to get people to see that we
>> (as in all Squeakers - forks like Croquet included) are indeed already
>> changing things making various forks incompatible with each other.
>
> It is extremely irritating to see these references to Croquet, traits,
> pragmas etc. which have nothing whatsoever to do with your proposed
> solution. So maybe you should stick to the benefits of your solution
> instead of making references to completely unrelated projects?

Mmmm, we are using them as examples of changes to the syntax and language
- which they clearly are - and which this clearly is too. There is nothing
wrong in doing that. If that annoys you, too bad. ;)

>> I clearly recall this positional thing popping up in another thread when
>> someone was trying to get something from Croquet working in regular
>> Squeak
>> (my memory sucks).
>
> Yes, in the OpenGL package. Which is (not coincidentally) the sole
> reason why we added it to begin with. Because, if you're a 3D guy you
> know OpenGL. And OpenGL has a *lot* of documentation that we could
> leverage by making it possible to transcribe C-code from:
>
>    glBegin(GL_QUADS);
>      glVertex3f(0.0, 0.0, 0.0);
>      glVertex3f(1.0, 0.0, 0.0);
>      glVertex3f(1.0, 1.0, 0.0);
>      glVertex3f(0.0, 1.0, 0.0);
>    glEnd();
>
> literally into:
>
>    ogl
>      glBegin(GLQuads);
>        glVertex3f(0.0, 0.0, 0.0);
>        glVertex3f(1.0, 0.0, 0.0);
>        glVertex3f(1.0, 1.0, 0.0);
>        glVertex3f(0.0, 1.0, 0.0);
>      glEnd();
>    yourself.
>
> In other words you can copy and paste large portions of OpenGL code
> literally into Croquet and I think that was completely worth it.

I probably agree and have never said it wasn't worth it.

>>> The nice thing about forks is that you can look
>>> at them, try them out, and then, with 20/20 hindsight can say whether a
>>> change like it makes sense for Squeak in general or not. But I don't
>>> think even you have used your namespace solution anywhere.
>>
>> No, I haven't. I will though, but I don't think it will buy much more
>> insight than possibly flushing out a few bugs and add a feature or two.
>> It
>> doesn't really say much about the larger picture.
>
> You may be surprised about that. Speaking from my own experience just
> being able to use a fundamental feature like this in your daily work
> changes how you look at it. Because *wherever* you go you have the
> option to use it and when you had that chance for a couple of months and
> look back and say "so why did I use it here and not there and what would
> need to be true for me to use it there" is *extremely* helpful for
> understanding your own implicit motivations and what you expect from the
> solution you originally designed.

Yes, might be so - ask me in a year or so.

>> If there is any other claim you refer to - please specify.
>
> No, it's just those - does that solution actually buy you anything in
> the long term, how do you use it in daily work, does rewriting your
> source code get annoying etc.

Ok, gotcha.

>> I am explaining and defending my solution, but I have generally given up
>> on getting it accepted - it is just the same story all over again. So
>> you
>> don't have to worry. :)
>
> The funny thing is that like I said initially I don't even care all that
> much but for some reason you get totally defensive about these issues.

Mmmm, perhaps I do - I apologize for that. I have tried not to :).

> And there are things I simply won't let slip by like factual errors
> about what is and what is not true in the current system. If you want to
> advocate your solution, go for it, just don't do it based on provenly
> false claims (like "you can already use colons in class names so we must
> support this in global references" which will make me respond every
> single time).

I should have written that "you can already *create* classes with colons
in their class names" - which is true no matter the reason. And AFAIK I
did write that it probably was a bug, right? And I did take it back as an
actual *argument* - which it was not really meant to be, I was more trying
to indicate that things aren't that well defined as some may think.

regards, Göran