simple modules

[Allen Wirfs-Brock]

> > Well, a "module system" is a language construct

I not sure I agree with that characterization.  A Module is a "language construct" as it as specific syntactic element of the language. It is a specific thing that you have to learn about when you "learn" the language.

It isn't clear to me that a "module system" a thing of that nature.  Certainly, a specification device is needed to define the semantics of Module/ImportDeclaration/ExportDeclaration but I'm not sure whether that specification device and related concepts would need to be taught.

It seems what we are really grappling with is the concept of a groups of Application syntactic elements that are processed as a single semantically self consistent unit.  In ES3/ES5 terms we are talking about a set of Program syntactic elements.  The current spec. doesn't need to name this concept because it only deals with a single instance of the concept.  Essentially the concept is "ambient".

If we are going to expand the ES specification to cover scenarios that require interaction among multiple instantiation of the of the current specification then we are going to have to explicitly deal with all of the ambient concepts that are implicitly in the current specification.

Before we worry too much about the naming of new concepts perhaps we should try to identified the existing ambient concepts that need to be explicit and then add any new only that are needed to support new features.  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: es-discuss-bounces at mozilla.org [mailto:es-discuss-
> bounces at mozilla.org] On Behalf Of David Herman
> Sent: Wednesday, February 03, 2010 3:11 PM
> To: Kris Kowal
> Cc: es-discuss Steen
> Subject: Re: simple modules
> 
> > Well, a "module system" is a language construct that provides
> modules. I think "sandbox" sort of suggests more isolation than is
> necessarily provided. PLT Scheme uses the worst possible name for the
> concept (I won't even say what it is, it's so awful).
> >
> > I'll think about alternatives and update the wiki.
> 
> How about "module group"?
> 
> Dave
> 
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