proposal

[Snyder%hplabs.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa]

In a message to this group last October, I mentioned that I was working on a
proposal for an objects facility that supports encapsulation.  I now have a
document that describes this proposal, and I am prepared to distribute copies
of it.  The document is written in the form of an annotated language
definition, and I would like to offer it as a concrete proposal for
consideration as an extension to Common Lisp.

As I stated in the original message, this proposal will not fully satisfy
everyone's needs (not even mine!). I consider it to be a conservative design
that provides useful functionality (including multiple inheritance) without
compromising encapsulation (which is, in my opinion, one of the fundamental
principles of object oriented programming).  It is my belief that if we can
agree on *some* object-oriented extension to Common Lisp, even one that
doesn't do everything, it will be of great benefit to the Common Lisp
community.  The alternatives are the chaos of competition or the adoption of a
defacto standard with serious problems.

What I would like to find out is whether people could live with this proposal
as a starting point, or whether there are serious problems that would need to
be fixed.  Since this proposal does not attempt to be a "complete" solution, I
am not terribly interested in criticisms of the form "this proposal doesn't
let me do X", unless X is "anything useful".  However, I would be interested
in criticisms of the form "this proposal could never be extended to allow me
to do X, because of the following flaw".

To receive a copy of the proposal, send me your USmail address and I will
mail you a copy.

  Alan Snyder
  snyder%hplabs@csnet-relay
  snyder@hplabs.csnet
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