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Subject: 
Re: Calling all Meta-commands
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.cad.dev
Date: 
Fri, 14 Mar 2003 22:27:33 GMT
Viewed: 
1372 times
  
In lugnet.cad.dev, Kevin Clague writes:
I don't think of any new meta-commands as polution.  Possibly over-population?

Namespace Pollution is a technical term. It's not meant as an insult, mind
you. It refers to a common phenomena in programming, in which things become
hard to use because of scope problems, because things named in global scope
interfere with each other.

We have a global command namespace. A global scope, if you like. Commands
such as SYNTH pollute that namespace, in that no one else can ever use that
command. The word SYNTH is taken already. If someone else wants to implement
a synth but do it differently, they're stuck having to come up with a
different command name, because the most natural one has already been taken.
Worse, if they decide to implement SYNTH, they have to do it the way
(syntactically, not programmatically) you chose to do it or the command
won't work.

Now, who owns the defintion of what SYNTH does? You? Them? Both of you
jointly? No one? Blech.

We either need a standards body to control the commands and hand them out
judiciously(1), or we need to use prefixes (program names or whatever)(2) so
we don't step on each other, or we need to live with the chaos that will
ensue from doing neither of the above.

If there are other choices I'm not sure what they are but I'm open to
hearing about them.

1 - as part of a larger charter to control the overall syntax and make sure
it grows and changes appropriately.

2 - the prefixes themselves are subject to the same potential phenomena of
pollution but it will happen at a slower rate, as programs get
invented/introduced less frequently than individual commands.



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Calling all Meta-commands
 
In lugnet.cad.dev, Larry Pieniazek writes: [...] (...) I agree with the route of a standards body to control (officially adopted) meta-commands. The second option is just a fix, and the third option is unacceptable, especially if we want to see more (...) (22 years ago, 14-Mar-03, to lugnet.cad.dev)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Calling all Meta-commands
 
I don't think of any new meta-commands as polution. Possibly over-population? I've got mixed feelings about the LTrax solution. It is very hard to know which meta-commands will be usable across many applications. Certainly the original LDraw (...) (22 years ago, 14-Mar-03, to lugnet.cad.dev)

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