- arbitrarily in all directions. There is still an expectation that
- functionality is implemented with methods on generic functions,
- acting on objects with slots; it is not possible, for example, to
- transparently implement support for “message not understood” as in
- the message-passing paradigm, because the analogue of messages
- (generic functions) need to be defined before they are used.
+ arbitrarily in all directions (conceptually, if a given object
+ system is a point in design space, then a MOP for that object system
+ allows exploration of a region of design space around that point;
+ see figure \ref{fig:mopdesign}). In the case of the CLOS MOP, there is
+ still an expectation that functionality is implemented with methods
+ on generic functions, acting on objects with slots; it is not
+ possible, for example, to transparently implement support for
+ “message not understood” as in the message-passing paradigm, because
+ the analogue of messages (generic functions) need to be defined
+ before they are used.