Re: Eliminating dynamic slots

[Gregor.pa@Xerox.COM]

The real issue here is whether you would like to be able to use
slot-value (nee get-slot) to access your dynamic slots.  What about
with-slots?  This seems to be what DLW calls syntax.

If you want to use with-slots, you have to be able to give up the notion
of so-called "undeclared" dynamic slots (ones which do not appear in the
defclass form but are created on the fly with get-slot always).  On the
other hand, saying that you could use slot-value but not with-slots
seems kludgey.  These are the problems that led us to remove :dynamic
slots from the CLOS specification.

In your own program, if you would like slot-value to access your
:dynamic slots, then you will need to define a new meta-class.

If you are willing to use a special function to access dynamic slots,
you don't really need a new metaclass, you can use something like the
property-list-mixin DLW referred to or the code that Jim Kempf
mentioned.  It would still be nicer to use a new meta-class since that
would let you put the :dynamic slots in the defclass form which would
help document your program and have all those other nice features.

I will look into adding a meta-class which does this for you, but which
would be written on top of CLOS to the same release of PCL in which I
remove :dynamic slots.