[clean-list] Comments on the module system

[Brian Rogoff]

Hi,
    I've been hacking with the new Clean compiler and thought I'd make some 
suggestions for improvement, since it's really easy to just kick back and
make suggestions; someone else does the heavy lifting! I'd like to find out 
if the things that bother me bother anyone else, or if it's just me
complaining about something I'm not used to yet. 

     One of the things that's (sorely, IMO) missing from the Clean module
system is qualified names, where you refer to the identifiers in a module 
using ModuleName.identifier or some equivalent syntax. 

     Another issue that I've mentioned is the lack of hierarchy. Even
rather pathetic (compared to Clean) languages like Java have hierarchical 
namespaces and I think it's a good idea. 

     In Clean 2, we don't need to repeat macro, type and class definitions 
from the defition module in the implementation module, which is
nice. However, we still need to have an empty .icl if it is needed. It's a 
petty complaint, but it would be nice if we could omit it. I think I
suggested to ronny@cs.kun.nl that it would be nice if we could omit
redundant .dcl's too (if the entire .icl were being exported, and you could
put all of the type decls in the .icl) but I don't think that's as useful. 

    Any other ideas? 

-- Brian