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From: aland@servio.slc.com (Alan Darlington)
Subject: Re: namespaces in (ANSI) Smalltalk?
Message-ID: <1996Feb21.222534.2942@slc.com>
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Organization: GemStone Systems, Inc., Beaverton OR, USA
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Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 22:25:34 GMT
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Dirk Wessels <ge68@dial.pipex.com> writes:
> In a few online ANSI-comittee discussions I found namespaces being 
> mentioned.
> I have some experience with several implementation of Smalltalk,
> and I think that namespaces may be the best way to improve any 
> implementation of Smalltalk and should be a part of a future ANSI ST 
> standard.
<snip> 
> Does any other Smalltalker agree with the possible potential of 
> namespaces/modulisation?
<snip>

GemStone Smalltalk has provided multiple namespaces for some time.
Each user has a list of naming dictionaries, rather than the single
Smalltalk dictionary of most vendors.  By adding and removing
dictionaries, you can tailor your namespace.  For example, several
applications could define class "X", and each one would use its
own version of the class.  Name lookup is order dependent, and
duplicate names are ignored (the first one found is used).

While somewhat limited (this works only at a class level, not at
a method level), it does provide some of the flexibility you would
like.

  Cheers,
  Alan
    (standard disclaimer)
