pvr@info.ucl.ac.be (Peter Van Roy) writes:
> b. The 'object feature' concept is broken. Why should an object have
> encapsulated stateful attributes and public stateless features? In our
> view, the existing features should be removed and replaced by
> encapsulated
> stateless features. I.e., remove features and add stateless
> attributes.
features are not "public" except when their names have been exposed to
the outside: using atoms achieves this effect, but you can also use Oz
names in which case they remain as private as you please unless you
give them away.
I can see that in the design space, you are considering the
"protected" version of stateless members: using a public name to refer
to stateless encapsulated (aka "protected") members. This is
certainly convenient for inheritance.
However object features have their place too, and it seems to me that
removing them would be a straight loss with no real gain (plus it
would break backward compatibility).
Cheers,
-- Dr. Denys Duchier Équipe Calligramme LORIA, Nancy, FRANCE - Please send submissions to hackers@mozart-oz.org and administriva mail to hackers-request@mozart-oz.org. The Mozart Oz web site is at http://www.mozart-oz.org/.