Transreptor

A request for the representation of a resource is made by SOURCEing its URI. The request may specify the aspect of the resource that it requires. If the aspect which is requested is not found in the resulting representation, the Kernel will attempt to locate a registered converter from an aspect of the representation which is available to the aspect which was requested. The components which convert one aspect to another are called Tranrepresentors (or Transreptors for short).

This is not a pretentious made up name for a transformer! A transform is an explicit operation on a resource to change it from one thing to another. A transrepresentation never changes the information of a resource, it only ever changes from one aspect to another aspect - transrepresentation is lossless and reversible. Transrepresentation is an isomorphic transformation.

We can illustrate by returning to the XML document example. Suppose that initially an XML document is obtained from the file system in it's lowest form, as a stream of bytes. However an Accessor requests that the resource URI be returned with a DOMAspect. NetKernel looks to find a binary-stream to DOM converter, more commonly recognised as a DOM Parser. It issues a request to the DOMParser Transreptor to tranrepresent the binary-stream to DOM. Finally the accessor receives the XML document in the DOM form it requested. The transrepresentation process is completely transparent to the accessor.

A wide range of transreptors are supplied with NetKernel for example all scripts are dynamically compiled using compiler transreptors - compilation of code is a form of transreption.