[closer-devel] Introducing new "type" classes

[Ross Jekel]

Hello,

There has been a good summary of the issues here already. I thought I
would mention an example of a similar system (RuleDispatch by Phillip
J. Eby) in Python (sorry) that takes the approach of allowing
ambiguity in the dispatch rules, only throwing an exception at runtime
if it actually occurs. In Python the throwing of the
dispatch.interfaces.AmbiguousMethod exception pretty much means your
call is over, but with Lisp one might be able to define conditions
that would allow the user to do custom handlers to resolve the
ambiguity.

Just a thought. This Charming Python article
(http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-cppeak2/) and these
slides (http://peak.telecommunity.com/PyCon05Talk/PyCon05Talk.html)
might give you some ideas. Mr. Eby based the dispatching engine on two
papers mentioned in slide 12
(http://peak.telecommunity.com/PyCon05Talk/img12.html).

Ross