> ..... But part of my point was that having a "special notation" would
> have eliminated the possibility of defining several classes/tagged types
> in the same package. Because of this--and the 'Class operation you can
> create classes that are closely intertwined. .....
This merits a quote from the Java/Ada comparison in September. Can't
comment further--I've still never _seen_ a Java package. If he's correct
about Java programmers, I'm not likely to see a good one soon. :-)
> The OOP inheritance mechanism is independent of the encapsulation mechanism
> ===========================================================================
>
> I still think Java has this covered. Non-public classes and methods I declare
> in a Java package are only visible within the package. Java programmers don't
> think this way but it _is_ a natural use of Java packages to put two public
> classes in a package along with all kinds of non-public classes. Nobody
> outside the package would be able to access the non-public classes. I don't
> think this is a "workaround"; I think it's a significant Java language feature
> intentionally provided to give Java programmers the same capability that is
> available in Ada. It's just that most Java programmers don't understand the
> _advantages_ of this kind of encapsulation.