Draft LW2 spec

[Dan Smith]

> On Jun 14, 2019, at 2:54 AM, Remi Forax <forax at univ-mlv.fr> wrote:
> 
> Hi Daniel,
> 
> section 4.1: in the table 4.1-A,
> 13/57/45..57 is missing given you talk about later in this section.

That's not a change this feature is responsible for, but you're right that it needs to be changed.

We have this awkward bootstrapping problem, where the document as it's being developed is built on top of 12, but eventually needs to be rebased to 13. Now that JVMS 13 is final, I could take a stab at rebasing everything.

> section 4.3.2:
>  I don't think that using null as a diferentiator (Nullable/NonNullable) is a good idea.
>  Yes, an inline type is not nullable, but it's also flattenable, loaded early, not circular, etc. This introduce a false dichotomy which we have already spent too much time. I don't remember the exact words that John is using, but it was making more sense too me.
>   Perhaps only renaming NullFreeClassType to InlineClassType is enough ?

I'll think more about this terminology. "Inline class type" is not sufficient, because QVal; and LVal; are *both* inline class types.

> section 4.10.1.2:
>   the bottom right of the schema is wrong because a reference type can be a nullable type or an inline type which is not nullable
>   I propose
>     
>             reference type
>               /        \
>             /           \
>    nullable type     inline class
>          |
>          |
>         null

Yep. I was hoping I could get away with some hand-waving. Guess not. :-)

The struggle here is that "reference type hierarchy" is meant to be a black box. I guess one way to make this work is to put 'null' in the box and remove it from the diagram. Another way is to break open the box, as you've done, but note that then you've got informal descriptions of types in a diagram that otherwise talks explicitly about specific types, and it's a lost cause trying to appropriately model the relationships between those informal descriptions (e.g., each inline class type is a subtype of some nullable types).