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