Hans Aberg writes:



>   The correct way to understand if various object oriented techniques and

> such are the right things, is to make a research prototype and then

> experiment with that: Such techniques are otherwise difficult to

> understand.



What I said was, that Hans's proposal was interesting but that I

hadn't concluded that it was the `right way forward'.  I meant exactly

what I said: I didn't mean I didn't understand it.  I'm attracted by

the constructs that David Carlisle produced in his frontmatter

proposal, which addresses the problem in a slightly different way.

David's proposal wins (IMHO) if we're not likely to run out of name

space.  If we are likely to run out of name space, Hans's proposal

(which I would identify with



  @InCollection{saltzer:names,

  author =       "Saltzer, J. H.",

  title =        "Naming and {B}inding of {O}bjects\nocite{bayer:os-advanced}",

  crossref =     "bayer:os-advanced",

  chapter =      "3.A",

  pages =                "100--208"

  }



  @Book{bayer:os-advanced,

  title =        "Operating Systems: an Advanced Course",

  publisher =    "Springer-Verlag",

  year =                 1979,

  editor =       "Bayer, R. and Graham, R. M.  and Seegmuller, G.",

  volume =       60,

  series =       "LNCS"

  }



which is the classic naming paper) comes into its own.



There is no problem in my mind with implementing Hans's suggestion

(though I would be interested to see his implementation).  There is a

problem with knowing whether it's necessary.  I believe it imposes an

extra burden of understanding on the user (and hence of documentation

on the implementor), so I don't want to rush into its use without

being entirely sure that it's the right thing.



Robin