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Re: [Xotcl] XOTcl 2.0 and NX

From: Gustaf Neumann <neumann_at_wu-wien.ac.at>
Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2010 08:44:58 +0200

  On 01.10.10 06:50, vitick_at_gmail.com wrote:
> Dear Gustaf,
>
> What is the reason for having XOTcl 2.0 and NX at the same time?
we will make a larger announcement in the near future
explaining the background, relationships in detail.

For now: we have a large XOTcl code base, for which it is
unrealistic to switch to the new language in short time.
Both, XOTcl 2.0 and our next scripting language are fully
scripted (loaded via package require), so they are much
easier to maintain.
> In NX, method declaration is private by default where it seems to me that it is more natural for it to be public by default (since the majority method declarations will be public) and it is the private method that should be declared explicitly.
many experiences and comments from 10+ years of xotcl were
brought into the design of nx (e.g. issues about naming,
large set of base methods, experiences from bug tracking,
etc.). One experience from larger projects (more than
500.000 tcl/xotcl code, larger and changing programmer team)
is that forcing developer to declare interfaces helps to
improve comprehensibility for starters. btw, nx has a weak
form of protection, one can call protected methods via "obj
eval .....", but these should be reminders to provide a
public interface for that functionality. Furthermore, the
default protection can be changed from the scripting level.

-gustaf neumann