Making (CLASS-OF <class>) be EQ to <class>

[Jon L White <jonl@lucid.com>]

re: 	(METHOD CHANGE-CLASS (STANDARD-OBJECT))			;sure
        (METHOD SHARED-INITIALIZE :AFTER (STANDARD-CLASS)) 	;maybe?

    The short answer is that it isn't possible for a user to do either of
    the method definitions you list.

Right.  What I was suggesting is that these prohibitions be spelled out in 
the same place in the spec that spells out the LISP-SYMBOL-REDEFINITION
restrictions.  [By the bye, my comments ";sure" and ";mabye" above are to 
imply that I'm sure this one is restricted, and that maybe the other one 
ought to be too.]


re:    2. If there are methods defined on function FOO at classes respectively
	  <C1, C2 ...>,then how can one temporary override the effective method
	  at that point, and cause it to defer to the next most specific one?
    . . . 
    The way to do this is to change either the method combination, or the 
    generic function class.

Yea, that's what I was afraid of.  Since the purpose in doing it was just
to suppress the MAKE-INSTANCES-OBSOLETE call so that Kim's circular linkup 
could be made, then some lower-level kludge would be, I guess, just as 
acceptable.  Like the :AROUND method that just "in-lines" the effective 
method that it wanted to "delegate" to.

Incidentally, this sort of request could also be viewed as supporting the 
need for COMPUTE-EFFECTIVE-METHOD, even though there are no new metaclasses
or generic-function-classes or method-combinations.


-- JonL --