On 03/07/07, Craig Latta <craig at netjam.org> wrote:
>
> Hi all--
>
>      I'd just like to remind everyone again of my design for shared
> variables from July of last year[1], implemented in Spoon at that time.
> I removed SystemDictionary; each class is responsible for its own name
> literal (so each one appears in only one place, instead of the two we
> had before). Each class name literal (an association between a symbol
> and a class object) is unique, so the name symbols need not be. Humans
> can distinguish classes from one another without regard to name by other
> means (e.g., author, version, class categories, object identity), with
> help from the development tools. Given this support, there is no need
> for namespaces in the common sense; the name symbol of each class can be
> anything, so in effect each and every class has its own namespace.
>
>      As for where to put the behavior formerly provided by the
> SystemDictionary instance, I prefer that it live at (Interpreter class).
> A normal system will have only that behavior there, a system with the
> support to actually build an interpreter will have a bunch more
> (currently provided by the VMMaker package).
>
>      Please see the design for more details.
>

Your solution is good one. And i prefer to see it in future versions of squeak.
But this actually raises a more broader question: what to do with
global variables, which is identified by name?
Can system be designed in such way, that it does not have any global
variables (which actually forces us to introduce a structure like
SystemDictionary)?

>
>      thanks,
>
> -C
>
> [1] http://tinyurl.com/yn7f9h (lists.squeakfoundation.org)
>
> --
> Craig Latta
> improvisational musical informaticist
> www.netjam.org
> Smalltalkers do: [:it | All with: Class, (And love: it)]
>
>
>