Parfait documentation

outline of expanded parfait, documented but not coded

lib/parfait/layout.rb

@@ -0,0 +1,31 @@
+# An Object is really a hash like structure. It is dynamic and
+# you want to store values by name.
+# One could (like mri), store the names in each object, but that is wasteful
+# Instead we store only the values, and access them by index.
+# The Layout allows the mapping of names to index.
+
+# The Layout of an object describes the memory layout of the object
+# The Layout is a simple list of the names of instance variables.
+# 
+# As every object has a Layout to describe it, the name "layout" is the 
+# first name in the list for every Layout.
+# But as we want every Object to have a class, this is the second
+# entry in the list. The name for the entry is "object_class"
+
+# In other words, the Layout is a list of names that describe
+# the values stored in an actual object.
+# The object is an array of values of length n and 
+# the Layout is an array of names of length n
+# Together they turn the object into a hash like structure 
+
+class Layout < Object
+
+  # given a name as symbol, return the integer index of that entry
+  # we use 0 as "not found" as we don't want negatives, and can't raise
+  # luckily 0 is always the type-word in an object and so by returning
+  # one-offsets we can use the return value straight without adding 1
+  def index_of( name )
+    #internal implementation....
+  end
+
+end