On Apr 1, 2004, at 4:14 PM, Andreas Raab wrote:

>> So you can still reference objects in your parent namespace without
>> qualifying them?  Since surely we won't be constantly using
>> (Squeak::Array new: 10), etc.
>
> We could easily solve that problem by having
>
>     self import: Squeak::Object as: #Object
>     self import: Squeak::Array as: #Array
>     ...

And if a new class is added to the base, you have to reimport #Squeak?  
Ok, fair enough.

>> Yup, I mentioned that earlier.  But since there's no equivalent to
>> #bindingOf: for selectors, that's less immediately useful.
>
> Sure there is - it's called Symbol>>hasInterned:ifTrue: ;-)

Well, ok, if we refactor the Compiler to use 
Class>>hasInternedSymbol:ifTrue: ...
Isn't that then a more general namespace mechanism than #bindingOf:?  A 
"namespace" just becomes a mapping from short names to fully qualified 
symbols, which are then either encoded as literals (for selectors), or 
looked up in Smalltalk (for globals).