Subject: Re: Package System and new dialect From: Erik Naggum <clerik@naggum.no> Date: 1998/07/22 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3110112916127531@naggum.no> * Kelly Murray | The fact its so cumbersome is certainly one reason everyone hates the | package system, its confusing and doesn't do what you think it does. count me out, please. I don't hate the package system. it also does what I think it does. I use the package system to partition both code and data in my current project into fairly gross partitions, for which the package system seems well suited (unlike the fine partitions frequently employed in namespaces or module systems in other languages), such as a "substrate" package of fairly low-level functions supporting the application code in its own package, which does _not_ USE the substrate package, but references the symbols therein explicitly. this avoids a lot of SHADOWING-IMPORT-FROM for redefined CL functions (stuff like a generic OPEN that dispatches on subclasses of PATHNAME -- not quite kosher) and also improves legibility in that one is not confused by apparent references to the standard CL functions. then there's the administration (or user) package which does USE the application package, but not the COMMON-LISP package and is intended as the user interface package. however, if I were to use a module system, it would have had an order of magnitude more namespaces. #:Erik -- http://www.naggum.no/spam.html is about my spam protection scheme and how to guarantee that you reach me. in brief: if you reply to a news article of mine, be sure to include an In-Reply-To or References header with the message-ID of that message in it. otherwise, you need to read that page.