Re: Proper namespaces in Elisp

[Vladimir Sedach]

João Távora <address@hidden> writes:
> I was talking about grep.

With grep you still know to search for SYMBOL because you know where
NAMESPACE ends and SYMBOL begins when you delimited namespaces
explicitly, like NAMESPACE:SYMBOL

> Again this comes with the problem, I don't think it's even worth
> discussing.

It affects debugging Elisp code, so it is very much worth discussing.

>> A question related to isearch: how would the proposed system work
>> with apropos?
>
> The actual symbol is always the longhand version.

So apropos would do the prefix abbreviation to symbol name
translation?

>> I am sorry, I don't follow. The proposal is for a file-local setting
>> that requires magic comments. Why wouldn't package authors be
>> required to change their code
>
> We can try to guess notable cases like s.el if they use the cookie
> ;; Package-Requires or even by watching the "require" calls.

Let me ask this a different way:

Who determines what prefix abbreviation to use for a given package?
Does the library author declare that "jennys-awesome-string-library"
has a prefix abbreviation of "jasl-" that everyone is obligated to
use, or does each user of the library declare the prefix abbreviation
when they require the library?

What delimits the scope of when the prefix abbreviation is active in
the reader?

Can you be more specific about the algorithm for "try to guess
notable cases"?

Why is the prefix abbreviation declared with magic comments (bad),
but the use of the prefix abbreviation with a require s-expression
(good)?

There are other ways to load code other than require. How does this
proposal work load/eval/etc.?

--
Vladimir Sedach
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