From: "Thomas R. Corbin" <tc@...>
Date: 2001-12-06T02:04:45+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:27567] Re: Package Naming

Bryan Murphy wrote:

>>
>>
>>I'm not sure what we should do, but I'm sure that RAA.succ should
>>enforce it :-)
>>
>>I can't think of a great alternative to module hierarchies, though
>>such hierarchies tend to have an element of arbitrariness to them.
>>Not through slopiness -- just because things don't always fall neatly
>>into categories or name paths.
>>
>>It may be, though, that this would not matter too much if there were
>>ways to index and search things that were orthogonal to the actual
>>names.  For example, if I'm looking for text processing modules, that
>>could include XML-related modules.  I could then just live with it if
>>what I found happened to be called XML::Something::Whatever instead of
>>Text::Something::Whatever.
>>
> I always wondered why something has to be part of a particular
> namespace.   I wrote a web application (currently in the slow process of
> updating it) that lets you take your bookmarks and categorize them
> (without having to make multiple copies of each bookmark).  You can take
> a look at my links here:  http://links.terralab.com/view/bryan/
> 
> Now, I don't see why Modules and Namespaces have to behave exactly the
> way they do.  Why not something like this?
> 
> module MyXMLConfigModule
>   module_alias Text::XML::MyXMLConfigModule
>   module_alias XML::Text::MyXMLConfigModule
>   module_alias Configuration::Tools::MyXMLConfigModule
> end
> 
> require 'Text/XML/MyXMLConfigModule'
> works the same as
> require 'XML/Text/MyXMLConfigModule'
> 
> ?  It would of course require some changes to Ruby, and some care would
> need to be taken on behalf of the module maintainers, but the module
> maintainers already do that anyway.  At least those modules that got
> into some sort of standard library could be guaranteed to be consistent.
>  You could also do something for your apps like uninstalling
> XML::Parsers::REXML, and replacing it with your own library that is
> interface compatible and aliases to XML::Parsers::REXML even though it
> isn't REXML.

        I really like your idea.  It looks like it would add a lot of flexibility
to a system.  Of course, it could be abused, but then so could many things. 
 I'd love to see your idea in ruby.