[Python-3000] Abilities / Interfaces

[George Sakkis]

On 11/22/06, Andrew Koenig <ark-mlist at att.net> wrote:
> > Both 'ability' and 'interface' imply (to me, anyway) that the class
> > being inspected is an actor, that it 'does something' rather than being
> > operated on.
>
> I chose 'ability' because to me it doesn't require that the class being
> inspected is active by itself.  For example, it feels natural to me to speak
> of a class as "having the totally ordered ability".

>From a linguistic point of view, "having the totally ordered property"
seems more natural and, more generally, captures better both active
("does something") and passive ("is [a description of] something")
concepts, but...

> The problem I have with 'feature' is that it's already in widespread use
> without a formal meaning.

Even worse, "property" has already a (different) formal meaning in
python, so I guess that's not an option (unless someone can come up
with a better name for existing properties _and_ convince that the
backwards incompatible name change is not a show-stopper).

George