Ropes and WordVectors...

[Hugh Hoover <heh>]

Well, while working wonderfully on FE stuff I realized that we have a bit
of an interface problem.  In the current interface, FE's submit data as
WordVectors and receive it back as Ropes.  Well, this is just a bit asymmetrical
and needs be straightened out.  (Especially as WordVectors are more appropriate
for FE's than Ropes).
  Suggest - Iterator * Rope::readyAsWordVector ()
or something similar.  The result of this would be to convert the Rope to
a batch of WordVectors (depending on their component PackOBits sizes).
  Of course, this won't work... because the Rope that comes back contains
address mappings too, and WordVectors don't have that.  So, we need either
a fancier Rope, or some other object that is both Rope-like and WordVector-like.
  This all reminds me of the run and TupleRun protocol I was discussing with
MarkM, Dean and Roger a month ago.  We need some compremise between the 
tuple/rope faction and the bits/iterator faction.
  The requirement is some form of lazy structure (with ready protocol) that
can provide address/data mapping and easy access to bits as WordVectors.  Go
to it!

  For now, I'm going to use the readyAsWordVector for the Smalltalk and just
assume that I'm getting contiguous words back.
--Hugh