We talked a bit on IRC but wanted to respond here too. I think it can be summarized briefly like this, I think:
In S4, Vobjects had an ordered list of named child links to other Vobjects, one type of which was a Property. In the proposal, Vobjects have an unordered set of named properties, one type of which is a link to another Vobject. (And properties can be lists or structured records, which could include Vobject links.) I like the benefits of embedded properties, as long as we can still retain or mimic some of the important aspects of Vobjects as well, in order not to limit the usefulness of properties, and also to facilitate transmogrifying a property into a new seperate vobject (using for example the 'overrides' part of your proposal). I think having ordered vobjects is useful. But could live with having ordered property data instead I guess. Properties should still have some kind of type/tagging associated with them (optionally) that could, for example, let programs use extensible API to access them (like Vobjects). For example, could you do the following using the new embedded properties: A property of a certain type has subproperties beneath it that contain the original value translated into other languages or locales. (or are generally speaking alternative versions) You can ignore the translations if you want, but if the property is tagged with "has-translations" or whatever, and the user has a preferred language, then use the subproperty for that language rather than the default. You could think of various things like this where you want to have the ability to add facets or special meaning onto a property in the same way as you can a Vobject using a Component (metaobject). Or, of course you might just want to have a tag on a property that might have some meaning but which does not imply that any subproperties exist etc. ... Can you walk through how overrides work or how one would replace an embedded property with an override that points to a seperate vobject? Would the new seperated property need to be a subproperty of a vobject? Or could we have a "Property" type Vobject (like the old kind), with the same or almost the same API as embedded properties? (And then you can link to it directly as a child link.) _______________________________________________ vos-d mailing list vos-d@interreality.org http://www.interreality.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/vos-d
