Minor Remarks

[rpg@lucid.com]

I've sent a lot of comments on the ``pink book'' in the past, but I
was glancing at it today and noticed a few things. These might
be repeats of previous comments:

Page 3-8: There is a sentence I can't understand. It is ``An effective
slot definition metaobject is used to represent information...about a
slot which is accessible in instances of a particular class.''

First, does ``which'' refer to ``an effective slot definition
metaobject,'' ``information'' or ``a slot''? Second, if the meaning is
best stated this way ``An effective slot definition metaobject is used
to represent information...about a slot that is accessible in
instances of a particular class,'' does this mean that there is or
might be a different slot definition metaobject for the `same' slot in
subclasses of the mentioned class?

Figure on page 3-10: Even though you later state that there can be
other classes in the picture, I think you ought not state in this
figure that these are the direct superclasses. I think there is no
need to limit the superclasses to these, and I see no particular
reason why these should even be *direct* superclasses.

Page 3-48: (A randomly selected page). Here I see some
overspecification. If the function compute-discriminating-function is
really to be used by an implementation, the value returned should be
allowed to be anything that fits with the other constraints on its
value - presumably the value is passed on to other functions, and
those functions are the only ones that care [sic] about type of the
object. A user should be able to write a method for it that returns a
function and that influences the behavior of his system, but this type
of value might not be what the implementation would normally do.

Also, when you say the value is a function, do you allow it to be a
generic function (which is a function, after all).

			-rpg-