RE: Prototype OO was Re: Inheritance/defaulting of attributes

John Gossman (JohnGo@asymetrix.com)
Fri, 10 Oct 1997 10:38:31 -0700

This is an excellent idea. For declarative languages especially,
prototype is a very good model for inheritance because it provides
default values for data fields and layouts of schemas, which is
primarily what you need (there is no behavior to inherit). I have used
this as the basis for my XML based OXF (Open Exchange Format). It seems
to be easier to understand for those who are not fluent in OO technique.

John Gossman
Asymetrix Learning Systems
>----------
>From: Meltsner, Kenneth J[SMTP:Kenneth.J.Meltsner@jci.com]
>Sent: Thursday, October 09, 1997 9:44 AM
>To: xml-dev@ic.ac.uk
>Subject: Prototype OO was Re: Inheritance/defaulting of attributes
>
>
>
> [Apologies for jumping in from outside the document/XML community -- I
> was reading the archive and found this thread interesting. An earlier
> attempt at sending this out failed, so this may be a duplicate as
> well.]
>
> The XML community may want to look at prototype-based object-oriented
> programming as an alternative to traditional class-instance objects.
> Prototypes allow the designer/user to create an object, change its
> properties, and then create new objects that inherit from the original
> prototype. There's a lot more details, including a description of
> inheritance by delegation of methods/properties to parent prototypes,
> but it tends to be a more useful approach for objects that model real
> world objects -- my dissertation used a variant of prototypes to
> implement an object-oriented approach to simulation for chemical
> thermodynamics.
>
>