Re: [xml-dev] RE: Namespaces Best Practice

[David Brownell <david-b@pacbell.net>]

Joe English wrote at September 19, 2001 CE:
> 
> Don't know if this will be helpful or not, but you should take a
> look at Henry Baker's papers [1] "Shallow Binding in Lisp 1.5" [2]
> and "Shallow Binding Makes Functional Arrays Fast" [3].

Hmm, interesting pairing:  Using a shallow binding mechanism
in conjunction with a lexical binding mechanism (namespace
declarations) to carry along scope when rearranging tree structures.

Shallow binding is avoided by modern Lisps, since the model
proved confusing (who can still explain upward v. downard
funargs? :)  and in any case is not as efficient as lexical binding
(constant time value lookup in programs).  [ It's way cool to
see papers using MLisp -- thanks! ]

I can see how the mechanism would work, and that it could
work reasonably well for some problems, but I bet there'd be
confusion lurking nearby when funarg-like problems pop up.

- Dave