Re: Claw & Re: ANNOUNCEMENT - GNAT 3.13p availability

[Simon Wright <simon@pogner.demon.co.uk>]

Ed Falis <efalis@pop.ne.mediaone.net> writes:

> Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com> writes:
> > Thanks, btw. Whenever I think I've made the inter-relationships
> > between my types and packages in OpenToken too complex, I can always
> > count on a jaunt through Booch to cheer me up. :-)
> 
> Simon Wright <simon.j.wright@amsjv.com> wrote:
> > Curses, my master plan has been detected!
> 
> Indeed. Whenever I really feel like twisting my brain up, I visit
> them, and some of the interesting ways I've seen them put to use ;-)

I'm aware of several places where people have used the BCs in projects
(ie, I've had bug reports). Perhaps you know more (including what the
projects actually _do_!) Do you think people have trouble because of
the lack of documentation, or is it just inventiveness?

> On a more serious level, I guess it raises some interesting
> questions about the price of generality.

I don't think I can properly appreciate the point you and Ted are
making here? On the whole there is one (public) type per package, so
if there was a new Container type Drawer I would expect to generate

  BC.Containers.Drawers             abstract Drawer
  BC.Containers.Drawers.Bounded     concrete Bounded_Drawer
  BC.Containers.Drawers.Dynamic     concrete Dynamic_Drawer
  BC.Containers.Drawers.Unbounded   concrete Unbounded_Drawer

and possibly either

  BC.Containers.Drawers.Bounded.Guarded        concrete Guarded_Bounded_Drawer
  BC.Containers.Drawers.Bounded.Synchronized   ...
  BC.Containers.Drawers.Dynamic.Guarded
  BC.Containers.Drawers.Dynamic.Synchronized
  BC.Containers.Drawers.Unbounded.Guarded
  BC.Containers.Drawers.Unbounded.Synchronized

(I'm working on just having new generics

  BC.Containers.Drawers.Guarded
  BC.Containers.Drawers.Synchronized

to be instantiated with a concrete Drawer form, but the compilers are
giving me grief).

I do agree that this is untidy, you would have thought some mixin
techniques would do the trick, but that wasn't really the brief.


If there's a topic worthy of discussion here, maybe we should retitle
the thread!

-S