Reinier asked:

>I've been following the name space discussion for a while and I do not
>really understand the need for something like that. I.e. I solve the
>"problem" as follows:

Basically name spaces (as I understand them) are needed to avoid classes
with the same name created by different developers. 

As long as every new class filed in is added to the (one and only) system
directory, this problem lasts.  Otherwise, implementing class name spaces
isn't difficult at all.  About one year ago I posted some code to
comp.lang.smalltalk which showed a quick and dirty implementation for class
names spaces in VisualWorks.  But it doesn't matter whether they're
difficult to implement or not, I think they should go into the kernel.  And
this is something, only the Squeak Central can do.  All morphic stuff
should be moved into a morphic name space, all swiki stuff into a Swiki
name space and so on.

>IMHO all these name spaces are just other (System)Dictionaries. 

That's right.  You showed one possible implementation in your code.  There
might be others.  So the second step (the first step is to thing of name
spaces as a good thing) is to choose the best implementation strategy.
Eventually the third step would be to change the existing system to make
best use of them.

>    thingLabSliderClass := self classAt: 'Slider' in: 'ThingLab'.
>    morphicSliderClass := self classAt: 'Slider' in: 'Morphic'.

I'd prefer something like 'Morphic::Slider' instead of the above message
expression or 'Morphic.Slider' to stay compatible with ObjectShare's
approach, but that's just syntactic suggar.


bye
--
Stefan Matthias Aust  //  Don't talk.  Just doIt.