New Lua 4.1 (work) event (handler) tables

["Joshua Jensen" <jjensen@...>]

> This version contains the changes in the previous work 
> versions plus the ones recently mentioned by Roberto.
> 
> Of course, none of these changes is definitive. This is 
> simply a work version that is being made available so that 
> you can experiment with it and send us your feedback.

I'm wondering why you chose to only make the event tables (handler
tables) available to tag methods only?  That is:

Events =
{
	Var = 5
}

MyTable =
{
	Var = 10
}

eventtable(MyTable, Events)

print(MyTable.Var)
print(eventtable(MyTable).Var)

As I have stated in previous postings, having these handler tables
available for storing functions can save considerably on memory.  Sure,
I can put whatever functions I want in the handler table, but I have to
use the ugly syntax in the second print() above to access the data.

Also, why aren't handler tables available for the basic types?  Powerful
namespace and/or OOP-like abilities can be provided for the basic types
if they have handler tables, too.  For instance, if you have a string:

ansiStr = "Hello"
print(ansiStr->len())  -- Assuming -> is a : operator that accesses the
handler table

Even better, if there was an additional string type, say for Unicode:

unicodeStr = L"Hello"
print(unicodeStr->len())

You can't tell the difference.  Both ansiStr and unicodeStr appear to
have the same interface, which makes the learning curve even less.

Thanks,
Josh