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From: jlc@goanna.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Configurability (Was: Re: Big Mac Systems)
Message-ID: <897@goanna.oz>
Date: Mon, 25-May-87 05:03:45 EDT
Article-I.D.: goanna.897
Posted: Mon May 25 05:03:45 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 27-May-87 02:02:32 EDT
References: <6187@dartvax.UUCP> <19103@sun.uucp> <839@goanna.oz> <19433@sun.uucp>
Organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia
Lines: 19

In article <19433@sun.uucp>, chuq%plaid@Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) writes:
>	Couldn't it be easier for the user (not the programmer though)
>	to construct configurable software?
> 
> {...}
> You could go one step futher and define an initialization interface to the
> program, so that the initialization is done by a CODE segment in the opened
> resource file -- this would mean that the main program would not need to
> know anything at all about what that program did. {...}

Yes, this idea is quite hot in the AI stream of object oriented programming.
The only reasonable way to achieve full software configurability is to
marry modules, inheritance with message passing (see Byte Aug 1986),
then we could have all the bliss of independent software modules,
configurable up to the users' taste - the module existance could be
determined at the run time by software inter-communication.

Should the software developers think more seriously about Object Pascal,
MacApp, Objective C, or even home grown ideas like Skel(?).