[MUD-Dev] Re: DevMUD: Inheritable modules

[The Arrow]

On Wed, 28 Oct 1998, Jon Leonard wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 28, 1998 at 07:20:20PM +0100, The Arrow wrote:
> > There have been a lot of talk about modules, how to implement them, and how
> > to send messages between them.  But so far I haven't seen anything about
> > inheritable modules.  I know it wouldn't be trivial to make a good
> > implementation, but once done they might make DevMUD even more OO and
> > extensible.  What do you think about it?
> 
> I don't want to do OO just for OO's sake.  I take the view that different
> projects benefit from different programming techniques, and I don't see how
> some of them help us here.

Of course not.  Nothing should be done just for the sake of doing it.
(At least thats what I think.)  This was just something I thought of right
before I went to sleep a few nights ago (many of my best thoughts come
then, unfortunatly most of them I forget during sleep).

> Interface inheritance:  Useful for making modules interchangable.  Specify
> 	the interface you want, and any modules that match it (or are a
> 	superset) will work.  I like this, and plan to use it for a telnet
> 	module working as a superset of a socket module.

It was something like this I thought of when I wrote the mail.
The problem with interface inheritance, is how to export the interface.
If the modules is written in C++ and we are using external inheritance
(as described by Nicklas) the subclassing should be pretty simple.  But how
should the driver know what interface (and module) to use runtime?

/ Joachim
======================================================================
The Arrow                   Email: arrow at trelleborg.mail.telia.com
Joachim Pileborg              WWW: http://w1.410.telia.com/~u41003102/
======================================================================
"They say I don't give a shit about anything," -- Magnus Uggla
"but I don't give a shit about that."        (translated from swedish)