[Rd] R Object models

[Nathan Whitehouse]

Dear R Developers:

  I'm part of a group of people working to extend an
existing object-oriented mimicing layer(R.oo) to use
S4 at its base rather than S3.  The existing
package(S3-based) has a set of useful attributes for
large scale development: pass-by-reference, common
inheritance structure(root object), coding convention
and others.

  Can anyone point me to some good resources for the
difference between S3 and S4?  Also, is there any
really comprehensive discussion about how this S4
struct/dispatch/CLOS-like(?) way of thinking about
object oriented programming differs from traditional
object oriented programming?(FOP vs. OOP, in the words
of Henrik Bengtsson.)

  Thanks a lot,
  Nathan Whitehouse
  Programmer
  Shaw Lab
  Baylor College of Medicine