local editing, heretical views

[Erik Ostrom <eostrom@research.att.com>]

of course, opaque identifiers aren't always even what you _want_.
in my usual hacking client, i can take a description or a piece of
code i'm editing, and easily retarget at a different object, update it
to reflect a verb name change, or even send it to a different mud.
(this is especially handy when i have a wizardly and a non-wizardly
character on the same system; i often get an editing buffer via my
non-wizardly connection, then realize i need to use the wizard to edit
the text in question.)  it's difficult to do any of these if you hide
from the user the state that says where a given piece of text is
going.

from a software engineering standpoint these are gross things to be
able to do, but for practical use, i'd be sad to see them all go away.
and yes, you can always cut and paste.  but with round trips involved
to get a new editing buffer, it can be significantly slower to do so.

anyway, i guess i'd prefer that "ident" which must be identical from
send to reply by replaced by "location" that is just another field
that the user can munge.  for the simple protocol, i mean.  for a
complex protocol with persistent identifiers, we can provide other
ways of changing what a session points to.

--erik