A number of changes were committed today. Mainly: 1. It should now be possible to install packages using classes and methods in a more straightforward way, and with or without saved images (saved images are still recommended for efficiency). The idea is to be able to write class & method definitions in a package source, with default `where' argument, as per examples in the green book. If another package is required, call require() in the main source (no longer needed to call it again in .First.lib). 2. The second batch of changes to classes & generic functions promised before, this time mainly to generic functions. Goals of the changes are to make class & generic function objects more usable and to make the methods code work with namespaces. 3. A change to require() and related functions needed for 1., with the added feature that detach() now warns if a packages is detached that is required by another package in the search list. Another feature needed for 1. is that the use of sys.source() in library() now sets an option to the toplevel environment used. A change to topenv() optionally allows functions to find this environment (and so make code work the same with or without saved images). As far as I know, the changes make things work that didn't before, rather than the opposite, but there are quite a few changes, so let me know if otherwise. Regards, John -- John M. Chambers jmc@bell-labs.com Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies office: (908)582-2681 700 Mountain Avenue, Room 2C-282 fax: (908)582-3340 Murray Hill, NJ 07974 web: http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/~jmc