source: trunk/abcl/doc/design/streams/design.rst

==============================
Design of lisp streams in ABCL
==============================

The previous design
-------------------

Previously, ABCL streams were built-in classes. This presented some
problems for Gray streams, because ABCL CLOS can't use a built-in
class as a base class, and Gray streams derive from a system-stream
class. This was corrected by converting ABCL streams to be
structure-objects instead of built-in classes, allowing CLOS to derive
from the streams. There was, however, another problem that revealed a
need to change the design in more drastic ways.

The problem with the previous design
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

While converting the streams from built-in classes to
structure-objects allowed derivation, the pretty printer still didn't
work with Gray streams. Gray streams replace the system stream
functions, saving the old function symbols so that they can be later
invoked. The pretty printer, however, just replaces the stream
functions, and calls the low-level primitives directly, thus bypassing
Gray streams completely. The attached image portrays the problem,
where pprint will, for example, invoke %stream-write-char, thus
bypassing any methods that there may be for stream-write-char using
Gray streams.

.. image:: pprint-problem.png

The planned future design and solution to the problem
-----------------------------------------------------

The solution to the problem is quite similar to how SBCL does its
streams. First of all, the pretty printer will no longer replace
stream functions. The stream functionality will be based on closures
in the slots of the structure-object representing the stream, and
those closures will invoke low-level i/o functions that are
stream-specific.

The pretty printer will just setup closures that will extract the
underlying stream object from a pprint-wrapped stream, and invoke its
low-level functions. If pprint wrapping isn't present, the slots will
contain closures that directly invoke low-level functions of
streams. Gray streams will still replace the stream functions, because
it's capable of invoking the replaced functions.

In addition to these changes, it is planned that the stream function
primitives will be moved from the Stream java class to a
streamfunctions library, allowing the stream functions to be written
in lisp rather than java.  There's an ongoing aspiration to increase
the lisp/java code ratio of ABCL, and this new design allows for that.

.. image:: pprint-solution.png