* Terje Norderhaug [2009-12-22 17:33+0100] writes:
Why is that needed?
It is needed for functionality that improves the usability of MCLIDE.
For example, the Apropos dialog (see screen shot at http://mclide.in- progress.com/tour) lets lisp developers filter the result of an apropos based on type. If the developer chooses to only be interested in the definitions of functions, clicking the Source button goes straight to the function definition even if there are other definitions for the same symbol. Several dialogs also present dspecs from Swank in more uniform custom ways rather than display the implementation dependent raw dspec string.
Hmm... sounds like quite bit of work for a relatively small improvement. I would estimate that 80% of all symbols have only one definition, i.e. most of the time it wouldn't make a difference.
Adding a definition-types function to swank will aid MCLIDE and other clients make sense of the definitions from swank by providing a type hierarchy or map from canonical definition types to the type symbols used in their lisp implementation specific dspecs. Are there any other solutions we should consider?
I guess you also want to include method signatures. That wouldn't work because in general the symbols for class names don't exist on the client side.
Helmut