SmalltalkImage current

Craig Latta craig at netjam.org
Tue Jul 3 06:30:35 UTC 2007


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.


     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)]




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