From: Alan Chen <alan@...>
Date: 2003-01-27T05:19:37+09:00
Subject: Re: Can we attack the 'not enough libraries' thing straight on?

I liked the proposals which separated the functions of searching in the
archive vs. organizing the code from the archive.

Browsing for a given functionality seems to be best handled through
categories. (or Google search :) However, once a given library,
module, or application has been located, I would think that accessing
the code would be via a unique location in a heirarchy.

The problem with code use from multiple categories is that naming
would be ambiguous regarding a given interface or codebase. What if
WWW::XML was the same code as Document::XML, but different from
Application::XML..  You might end up loading the same library twice
into different spaces, or you might end up supporting two different
XML apis, etc.

Of course it is always nice to be able to make local decisions which
may be better suited to your particular needs and wants. Maybe if we
provided a remapping mechanism:

Local::Taste = require_as('too/deep/into/the/standard/heirarchy/for/my/taste.rb')

Other than that, some storage of implementation fields would be nice
too: is it pure ruby, or an Win32 only extension, or a multi-arch
extension, dependent on an external lib, etc... but I'm sure that's been
discussed before.

On Mon, Jan 27, 2003 at 12:53:30AM +0900, ahoward wrote:
> On Sun, 26 Jan 2003, Dave Thomas wrote:
> 
> > Folks:
> >
> > I think there's a hint here. The real world isn't hierarchical. Why are
> > we assuming the archive should be?
> >
> > Dave
> 
> i think that what's been proposed is categorical and not hierarchical.

-- 
Alan Chen
Digikata Computing
http://digikata.com