future intentions

Once transactions are working again, I want to stay focused on the Ark for a while, adding some commands (especially creates and destroy) to better exercise it.

I also want to change the direct portal so that, when working with a script file, nested transactions are used so that the entire script can be run atomicly as a single transaction. Then its only a small step to having scripts in DSects.

After that, we need dump/snap/restore.

Then its time to redo framework. The current architecture is simply too constraining. For example, I would like displays to be specific to the class of rolon being displayed rather than having a lot of embeded if statements--this will be far more extensible and indeed will overcome the last major restriction on Ark extensibility. I've got a bunch of ideas on how to do this.

The key idea is to turn displays into event generators and turn portals into event processors. I did this a few years ago and was able to suport a range of output formats, and even publish documents using TeX. So this is not new ground for me (unlike nested transactions). This is also a very rolonic approach (structure/stream).

Bill