...

Is this the same as "public" in C++ (= visible to everyone)? I, personally, would prefer "public", "protected" (=visible only to descendants) and "private" (=visible only to the type/class itself -- BTW, BP does it a bit differently, and extend the visibility of private methods to the whole unit it's declared in. I don't see any reason or advantage of this). So, perhaps we could allow all those keywords, including "published", in any order, also possibly repeated (unlike BP).

In Delphi there are four such directives:

public - like in BP - visible for everyone private - like in BP - visible only for this unit (I don't see any advantages too)

Having the 'private' declarations visible anywhere within the unit in which it was defined is sort of a compatability thing with C++ 'friends'. Correct me if I am wrong, but a C++ class can be defined as being 'friends' with another class. Since they are 'friends', they can share certain properties. I personaly don't care for this. There are better ways of access properties in other classes! Plus this breaks the idea of 'object oriented' programming and provides a way around the OO paradigm.

protected - visible for this class and its descendants published - same as public, but also accessible at the design time (in Object Inspector) - I don't program Delphi, but as I remember only properties were placed here.

Right, only published propertied show up in the object inspector. I think for now, in GPC anyway, allow 'published' and treat it as a 'public'. When GPC moves to X-windows or gains a visual/graphical development tool, we should be able to utilize it better.

Just my thoughts...

Ken L kc7rad@vegasnet.net klinder@hn.com