Re: Convention for naming of packages

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"Pascal Obry" <pascal@obry.net> wrote in message 
news:4f355230$0$21451$ba4acef3@reader.news.orange.fr...
...
> It would be awful to write:
>
>   with Shapes;
>   O : Shapes.Shape;

But this is exactly what Claw does, as it is best for reusable code to work 
well for both "use-friendly" and "use-adverse". The above is far less 
frequent than calls, and the alternative of "Object" for the type is 
actively hostile to the "use-friendly". Unless a package is only going to be 
used under a single style-guide (that is, within your organization), it 
really ought to be friendly to both approaches. (Which admittedly increases 
the level of difficulty for naming.)

[Note: Claw actually uses "Shape_Type" for type names, so the above actually 
looks like (using a decent name for the objec):
    Triangle : Shapes.Shape_Type;
It definitely makes object declarations look redundant, but doing that 
allows all other uses to not be redundant.]

One thing I neglected to mention in my last post is that under no 
circumstances should the name of the type appear in (OO) subprogram names. 
The object parameter to the subprogram should be named well enough to give 
the content for the "use-friendly" (and if it is not, the client has more 
problems than we can help them with), and the package name will give the 
context for the "use-adverse".

We spend quite a bit of effort on designing and adopting a consistent naming 
for Claw, as I was convinced that naming was going to have a huge impact on 
the usability of the product. (And I had plenty of experience with the 
haphazard naming used in the Janus/Ada code base, and I didn't want to 
repeat that.)

                                            Randy.