On 30-Jun-08, at 6:02 PM, Michael van der Gulik wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 6:34 AM, tim Rowledge <tim at rowledge.org> wrote:
> I am trying to make time to post a few articles on some future  
> directions I consider interesting for the core system.
>
> First one is up at http://people.squeakfoundation.org/article/ 
> 89.html - do please comment on the relevant page, or even here.
>
> Does every numbered prim also have a name or named equivalent?

It's just a prim, ie a function somewhere.

I'm proposing that we name all those prims that are currently numbered  
- primitive 1 would become "primitiveAdd" in a similar manner to say  
"primitiveDisablePowerManager".  This would allow all prims to be  
built as plugin components, thereby allowing on the fly replacement of  
those plugins (making due allowance for handling retained state etc,  
of course). (It's sometihng I've been wanting to see done since 1988;  
I had discussions with Alan Schiffman & Peter Deutsch about it way  
before I even move to ParcPlace). We would lose the primitive table,  
saving a 8 kb or so. Oh and the *really* obsoleteIndexPrimitiveTable,  
saving another 8Kb or so.

Some code gets simplified, some space is saved, some flexibility is  
added, some bits are freed up in the CM header. THe downside is  
someone has to do some work.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Advanced design: Upper management doesn't understand it.