Inclusion Lists for Hypercardus Clonus

[Ravi Pandya <ravi>]

A bunch of things in michael's message are essentially sound, but are
not quite in sync with the current docs & links level code. This is
understandable, since MarkM & I are the only ones who know about it.
Mea culpa. I will reveal all on the 26th. Until then, some brief
comments about how things work in the current design.

   Date: Tue, 13 Feb 90 23:48:45 PST
   From: michael (Michael McClary)

   So "Look but must vcopy to touch" has the right incentive structure.

You can touch, but it loses its original type identification if you
aren't authorized to use it.

   If an editor wishes, it should be ABLE to suppress automatic display
   (and thus automatic time-wasting transmission) of data of unknown type.

Front end function. You get a waldo proxy, which only gives you data
if you ask for it.

   What's the right thing?  Probably:

    - Always notifying users of the presence of data of unknown types.

Yes.

    - Providing a user-hook for conformance-checking and attempting to
      view it as various known types.  (i.e., a temporary "cast")

Automatically shows as the most complex known type.

    - Providing a user-hook for rechecking-and-view-attempting something
      that came up looking like garbage as if it were some other type.
      ("cast-and-redisplay")

Yes, by re-wrapping with a different waldo.

    - Providing a user-hook for automatically confomance-checking-and-
      displaying future occurrences of new-type-"foofoo" data as
      existing-type-"foo" data.  ("remember cast")

Might be a simple extension. Once it's all in place I'll take a look.

    - Converting the data to the understood type when it is edited.

Yes.

   Seems to me it might be wise for the backend to provide a hook for
   "claims to conform to standard 'foo'" which is publicly endorsable
   for every "conforms to standard 'foo'" endorsement.  A frontend
   developer could chose to display (after checking) foreign data that
   claims to conform to his standards.  (He might also have his product 
   automatically endorse data it found to be conforming, to accellerate
   display in other sessions.)

Since any Joe can use the endorsement, I'm not sure it's worthwhile
doing as a system function. The conversion is going to have to be done
from the raw system type anyway, so the developer might just as well
provide the conversion for anything that the user at the time wants to
look at as a foo. If a developer finds it useful to provide a public
might-be-foo endorsement, they can.
	--ravi