[REBOL] Re: UHURU unit structure
From: joel:neely:fedex at: 30-May-2001 8:11
Gabriele Santilli wrote:
> Joel Neely wrote:
>
> >
> > I'm willing to start with convention, and then figure
> > out if we need the extra layer in the implementation.
> > I'd rather keep the list of dependencies as small as
> > possible, at least at first.
>
> I agree. It's just that a user might feel safe not to trash
> the global context because he's inside an object, but this
> is not true. If we really want to avoid name clashes then
> we have to do that (thin) extra layer; otherwise, we're
> leaving all up to the user, just exactly as it is now ---
> which is not necessarily bad, but which was not our objective,
> was it?
>
Two quick thoughts...
1) The idea behind the every-unit-makes-an-object convention
was just to standardize on something that would *allow*
the user to place words in whatever context (s)he wished.
The IMPORT mechanism was just a small assistance to that
end.
This certainly doesn't add any fundamental new capability
to REBOL, but removes one more weak excuse not to play
well with others ("I wasn't sure how ...") It also was
intended to minimize the run-time overhead of using code
provided by units.
2) The choice of the word "layer" was deliberate, and intended
to recall the idea of protocol stacks. If we build the
basics of UHURU (e.g, the INSTALL, MAKE, IMPORT for clients
and some simple conventions for servers) we can always
provide thicker walls and new utilization methods as later
upgrades based on real experience with using UHURU.
Alternately, we can pursue those discussions (among the
users -- and with RT participation I hope!) in parallel
to the discussion/development of server/transport/client
stuff.
-jn-
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joel'dot'neely'at'fedex'dot'com