Re: FYI: a metaobject extension

[Gregor Kiczales <gregor@parc.xerox.com>]

   Date: Thu, 21 Jun 90 17:29:25 PDT
   From: Jon L White <jonl@lucid.com>

   That looks like a bug/oversight in the documentation of CLOS.  Can't we
   just agree that that's what was originally meant?


   Date: Tue, 31 Jul 90 14:31 EDT
   From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>

   There have been no answers to this after a month, so I guess
   that proves we can't agree.  I myself would like to see the
   change, but am unwilling to disrupt the fragile X3J13 process
   by proposing it.  I do note that CLIM depends on this feature
   in four Common Lisp implementations (in each of them it was
   either already present or trivial to add).  Of course when I
   say "CLIM" you have to ask "which version?"

This has been on my list of messages to try and reply to.  I was hoping
to find time to write a thoughtful and detailed reply.  Barring that
here is a shorter comment.

I don't think this a good feature to add, and I don't think that I could
possibly construe it as `what we originally meant'.

I believe this feature flies in the face of the name/metaobject
separation we worked so hard to get right.  I also believe that this
name/metaobject separation is one of the significant contributions of
CLOS to the world of Lisp-based OOLs, so it is important to keep it
right.

I believe that the proper way to do this is by making a method object
and calling add-method.  Yes, its true that Chapter 3 isn't an official
standard, but certainly within your own implementation you could have
done that, and CLIM could do it as well.