[DGD] kotaka: new feature: object catalog

[Kris Van Hees]

On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 10:07:38PM -0700, Raymond Jennings wrote:
<<skip>>
> > Now maybe someone can take
> > the extra step and truly implement arbitrary naming of objects as I did back
> > in the mid-90s, with support for e.g. inherit <id> rather than inherit <path>.
> > With the much improved DGD that we have now that should be quite a bit easier
> > than it used to be.
> 
> It would probably require runtime interpretation of inherit directives.
> 
> The kernel library presently does not allow this as far as I know.  If
> anyone knows different, correct me.

Back in the mid 90s it involved a fairly small patch, essentially adding in a
syntax construct in the grammar to allow an object to identify itself under an
arbitrary name, and adding driver object calls to (1) alert the library that a
newly compiled object is to be known henceforth as <id>, and (2) to allow the
library to provide the object that corresponds to a given arbitrary name.

The same work also introduced a concept of singleton classes (named entities),
that could only be loaded as a single instance.  I.e. it was not possible to
clone from these objects nor was it possible to inherit from them (in a later
version, I allowed inheritance if the inheritant was an entity also).

Ah, the good ol' days :)

	Cheers,
	Kris