4.2 The Abstract Level

Before usage, initialize any specialization of portableCommAddress with init.

Any portableCommAddress is able to express its value in textual form, by the operation asText. This enables simple and safe migration of an instance of any specialization of portableCommAddress: Translate it into text, send it across the network, write it into a disk file, or whatever, and then reconstruct it as a BETA object from its text value.

Tell a portableCommAddress what proporties are required of the communications associated with it by entering a protocolSpec object reference. This affects its choice of concrete communication port(s) in subsequent communications.

To reconstruct a portableCommAddress from its text representation, give it as enter parameter to portableCommAddressFromText, and a corresponding object will be exited. The text is expected to have been produced by some instance of a specialization of portableCommAddress using its asText.

Problems in this process are reported by invoking parseError. This terminates the application, unless you extend parseError to handle it.