On Thu, 16 Mar 2000, Dan Ingalls wrote:

> AGREE at CarltonFields.com wrote...
> > Why can't the ASCII string be the SmallInteger of a new STRINGTHING
> > hierarchy, where operations within the string world be seamless?  
> > Every time I raise this point, there were countless objections about
> > things Squeak so configured could not do (the biggest deal was
> > auto-reversing Hebrew/Anglo-Numeric text), but it seems that we could
> > still accomodate many of the advantages of Unicode, integrate the
> > whole into Squeak, while preserving ALL of the efficiencies of the
> > present ASCII world for unmixed ASCII and Character stuff.
> 
> I agree with this approach entirely.  It's a great Squeak Samuri
> project (I would do it tonight, but I've got a hot date ;-).  Just put
> StringThing between ArrayedCollection and String, move all of String's
> methods up a level, leaving only those that have to do with String's
> primitive behavior.  It shouldn't take more than an hour, and
> everything should still work.

Sounds great to me, too.  Except maybe call the new class something other
than StringThing... maybe "AbstractString" might be most appropriate?  
(Naming is important, y'know... :-))

- Doug Way
  EAI/Transom Technologies, Ann Arbor, MI
  http://www.transom.com
  dway at mat.net, @eai.com