LANG: Object Naming Proposal

Nathan J. Strange ([email protected])
Sun, 25 Jun 95 16:08:15 EST

I've been thinking about schemes for object naming and referancing
and I think I have a pretty good one... so here it is for you all torbr> evaluat>Prbr>

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REF -- Assign a name

REF would be like Robert's PASSIVE DEF. I realize that this canrbr> be don> with switch{DEF blah} now, but I think it would be better rbr> to make a keyword that does this outright... So in >hort, REF wouldrbr> be just like DEF, only it would not be rendered

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Referancing childrenrbr>

If a named node has named children, then those children may berbr> referanced relative to the parent node as followsPrbr> Parent.Child.Grandchild.etc....

ExamplePrbr> DEF jim Seperator { .....
DEF bill Seperator {....}
DEF bob Sphere {....}
}
Translate {....}
REF jim.bob Cube {...}
USE jim

This would display jim once with a sphere as a component and thenrbr> replace the sphere with a cube, and then display the modified versionrbr> A similar method could be used to make sevel difserant lamps
with difserant bases, of difserant colored lampshades... The lamp
could have children like: lamp.lampshade.color and lamp.base.color
for examplerbr>

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DEF, USE and REF spanning files

Currently DEF and USE cannot be used to span files because WWWInline is
not loaded needed... There is no point in loading a detailedrbr> model of a fruit fly if the viewing window is 100 meters wide... but
if we do something like:

DEF file1 WWWInline {....}

And say this referanced a file containing the nodes from the example
above, we would refer to those nodes as file1.jim, file1.jim.bill,
file1.jim.bob, th> is not loaded, there will not be any mix refers to the WWWInline. So instead of not allowing DEF and USE to rbr> span files, w> can say "Children of a WWWInline can only be referanced
if the WWWInline is named"

-Nathan