re: Random metaclasses for CL types

[Dick Gabriel <RPG@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>]

[In reply to message from jonl@lucid.com sent Fri, 19 May 89 21:07:17 PDT.]

I haven't been following this debate too closely, but on discussing
it with Dussud and Jonl, I am not sure why the metaclass taxonomy cannot
look like this:

		class
                  |
       ---------------------------------------------------
       |               |                 |               |
built-in-class basic-flavor-class structure-class standard-class
       |               |
       |     --------------------------------
       |     |                              |
flavor-implemented-built-in-class ordinary-flavor-class

where basic-flavor has just enough structure to support the
flavor-implemented builtins, and just enough ontology to represent flavors
(as usual, I don't endorse these names). PATHNAME and STREAM are instances
of flavor-implemented-built-in-class and user-defined or other flavors are
instances of ordinary-flavor-class.

The other alternative is to flush built-in-class and let imlementations 
decide their own metaclass hierarchy. Maybe that way we would see some
implementors doing some innovative design.

			-rpg-