[vos-d] s5 properties proposal

[Reed Hedges]

We talked a bit on IRC but wanted to respond here too.

I think it can be summarized briefly like this, I think:

In S4, Vobjects had an ordered list of named child links to other 
Vobjects, one type of which was a Property. In the proposal, Vobjects 
have an unordered set of named properties, one type of which is a link 
to another Vobject.  (And properties can be lists or structured records, 
which could include Vobject links.)

I like the benefits of embedded properties, as long as we can still 
retain or mimic some of the important aspects of Vobjects as well, in 
order not to limit the usefulness of properties, and also to facilitate 
transmogrifying a property into a new seperate vobject (using for 
example the 'overrides' part of your proposal).

I think having ordered vobjects is useful. But could live with having 
ordered property data instead I guess.

Properties should still have some kind of type/tagging associated with 
them (optionally) that could, for example, let programs use extensible 
API to access them (like Vobjects).  For example, could you do the 
following using the new embedded properties:

A property of a certain type has subproperties beneath it that contain 
the original value translated into other languages or locales. (or are 
generally speaking alternative versions)  You can ignore the 
translations if you want, but if the property is tagged with 
"has-translations" or whatever, and the user has a preferred language, 
then use the subproperty for that language rather than the default.

You could think of various things like this where you want to have the 
ability to add facets or special meaning onto a property in the same way 
as you can a Vobject using a Component (metaobject).

Or, of course you might just want to have a tag on a property that might 
have some meaning but which does not imply that any subproperties exist etc.

...

Can you walk through how overrides work or how one would replace an 
embedded property with an override that points to a seperate vobject? 
Would the new seperated property need to be a subproperty of a vobject? 
Or could we have a "Property" type Vobject (like the old kind), with the 
same or almost the same API as embedded properties? (And then you can 
link to it directly as a child link.)