[Xotcl] results of the poll

From: Gustaf Neumann <neumann_at_wu-wien.ac.at>
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2002 14:08:36 +0100

 Dear XOTcl community,

 the results of the poll can be summarized as follows:
   - most people favored "names" instead of "symbols"
     for "selfDispatch"
   - the hottest favorite is "my". One can write now

        ...
        my instvar a b c
        my log
        ...

      instead of
        ...
        [self] instvar a b c
        [self] log
        ...

      the variant with [self] will continue to work
      forever..
      If someone is not happy with "my", please react
      soon.

 From the "volatile" front: we have now more-or-less Zoran
 suggestion implemented in C. Actually there is no need
 in general for using tcl-variables to implement volatile
 objects (we could handle this on a pop of stack frames),
 but at least for pure tcl-procs, var traces are the simplest
 implementation. The current implementation (purely in C)
 works as part of the "new" method:
 
    a) Object new ...
    b) Object new -childof ...
    c) Object new -volatile ...
    d) Object new -volatile -childof ...

 (a) creates "global" objects, not in the global
 namespace anymore, but in xotcl. (b) can be used
 to create objects as child of other objects (e.g. [self],
 the objects are deleted, when the specified object is deleted),
 (c) are "global" objects as in (a), but they are deleted,
 when the current tcl-proc/object-proc/instproc is left,
 and (d) is a combination of b and c.

 Needless to say, a-d works for classes as well as e.g.

   Class new -volatile

 in order to create "anonymoes" classes. The implementation
 of new is slightly faster than before, since i changed the
 nameing schema to be the same for all kind new ("__#122", ...),
 such that e.g.
   [Class new -volatile] new -volatile
 works as well. the disadvantage is that the neat
 classname derived names as in earlier versions have
 to be done by hand now...

 that was it for now

 best regrads
-gustaf