FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification

[William Tanksley]

On Mon, 30 Jul 2001 13:12:00 -0700, Sam Penrose wrote:
>Guido van Rossum wrote:

>> I think 'self' would be confusing.  I'd like to propose 'cls'.

>How about an English word or phrase in lieu of YATATL (yet another
>terse acronym to learn)?

Yes, please.  Does anyone have any prior art on this topic?  'self' is
nice because it was in common use before.

>Insofar as "self" derives from the notion of
>an instance, we want somethign that derives from the notion of one's
>classification. 

Good thinking.

>The GNU-based Roget's Thesaurus suggests for "class" :

>division, category, categorema[obs3], head, order, section;
>department, subdepartment, province, domain.  kind, sort, genus,
>species, variety, family, order, kingdom, race, tribe, caste, sept,
>clan, breed, type, subtype, kit, sect, set, subset; assortment;
>feather, kidney; suit; range; gender, sex, kin.

>I like order, genus, and kind. On balance I guess "kind" seems best:
>short, appropriate, and not a term I've noticed used in the corners of
>the language I deal with. 

Of all the choices there, I like 'type' the best, because 'type' is
already used as a semi-synonym for class.  In fact, this change is
described as the type-class unification.

OTOH, perhaps we don't want a synonym for 'class'; perhaps we just want a
plural version of 'self'.  'selves'?  'us'?  'our'?

-- 
-William "Billy" Tanksley