[z-machine] stream/window interaction

[David Carlton]

On Fri, 21 Nov 2003 11:02:30 -0800 (PST), Amir Karger
<amirkargerweb@yahoo.com> said:

> (I suspect what's really happening here is that I don't understand
> OO analysis and design. But I'm finding it tough to break down the
> Z-machine into pieces, because all the pieces (streams, windows, IO,
> etc.) overlap.)

I wouldn't treat the Z-machine spec as being naturally associated with
gloriously clean OO design.  I'm not sure how much of this is due to
the nature of Infocom's design and how much of this is due to the
flexibility of the spec.  That's actually what my objection to an
earlier version of the "Unicode in strings" proposal started with:
that proposal conflicted with the class breakdown in an interpreter I
wrote, so I complained. :-)

But it's a good design challenge - you should be able to come up with
a satisfactory design if you try hard enough.  If you want to talk
about this, I'm happy to do so.

David Carlton
carlton@bactrian.org