Bill,

Yes, I agree that we need some common terminology.

The issue is not about a recursive tree structure (or list) consisting
of a single node type. The existing code in scene.spad works that way
already and (as far as I can see) so so does:
http://axiom-wiki.newsynthesis.org/SandBoxAldorInductiveTypes

My issue is how do I divide this into separate node types (domains),
each with its own data types and a common set of overloaded functions.
For example draw() that will have the appropriate behaviour for that
node type. So that when I call draw() on the root this will recurse
through the tree and each node will draw itself appropriately.

We don't know at compile-time what types and how many children a given
node type will have so the rep need to point to a list of the generic
category types. The language needs to know at run-time which of the
overloaded draw() functions to call for that particular instance.

What word would you use for that behaviour?

I know I have mixed up OO and SPAD terminology in the above
description.I find myself getting very convoluted in the above
description because I'm trying to get an agreed terminology without
getting into the issue of how it might, or might not, be implemented.
That is I'm trying to avoid talking about how OO data instances have
run-time pointers to their procedures and SPAD doesn't.

Martin

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