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From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: Re: [Inform] Newbie Question
Message-ID: <G9Dous.G8o@world.std.com>
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 19:01:40 GMT
References: <20010224034714.16951.00002635@ng-mj1.aol.com> <slrn99kp9o.ae.cerutti@fiad06.norwich.edu> <G9DH42.BwJ@world.std.com> <slrn99l9d3.8u.cerutti@fiad06.norwich.edu>
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Neil Cerutti:
>Oh. Your criticism was much more sweeping than I at first
>thought. I was blinded by the library. I like your ideas. Is any
>of this part of the modified Inform compiler you can't get
>permission to release?

Oh my, no. "Fixing" this requires writing a whole new library;
probably unnecessary to touch the compiler. A truely object-oriented
one would do the trick, but I've never looked at the ones in
development (Platypus, I think?) to see how far they go.  Of
course, if you're willing to switch languages, I suspect that
the Tads 2 library is much less "hackish" in this sense, and
I expect Tads 3 to be moreso less-so.

To be fair, Inform's libraries were probably designed with
a lot of attention to performance and space, since it was desired
that it run on relatively small machines; and as such, Graham
may have been making good choices in the various things in the
library that grate on my nerves, given that goal.

SeanB
