On Wed, 17 Nov 2010, Wolfgang Schuster wrote:

> I’m not Aditya but i hope you will also accept my explanation.

This is a much better explanation than I could have written. Just a few 
points:

> I will start with the first argument and the „type“ key, e.g.
>
>   \definenamespace
>     [fancybreak]
>     [type=module]
>
> will produce the namespace „@@@@fancybreak“ with the short form
> (the name itself has the same length but for TeX it’s only a single
> tokens instead of many with the @@@@... form) \????fancybreak.
>
> The is currently only one argument with the name „module“ but
> another one like „core“ or „base“ can appear in the future but
> this will be then reserved for Hans to replace the \definesystemvariable
> command from the core to produce a namespace in the form „@@xx“.
>
> When you define a namespace you should use three or more letters
> because two letter namespaces are reserved for Hans itself,
> e.g. is already used by the database module.
>
>
> The second key you need is „name“ because it’s argument is used
> when all the „\setup...“ and „\define...“ commands are created.
>
>
> The key „style“ creates the command „\doset<NAME>attributes“ which
> takes two arguments where the first is to change the style (font)
> in your new created command and the second for the color.
>
> The setup
>
>   \definenamespace
>     [fancybreak]
>     [type=module,
>      name=fancybreak,
>      style=yes]
>
> creates the command \dosetfancybreakattributes which can be used like
> \dosetfancybreakattributes\c!style\c!color and will take the „style“
> and „color“ argument from the \setupfancybreak command.
>
>
> The setup key creates the command „\setup<NAME>“ where you can control
> whether the commands accepts a list of environment in the two argument
> form or only a single environment, e.g. „setup=yes“ let you write
>
>   \setupfancybreak[one][..,..=..,..]
>
> and
>
>   \setupfancybreak[..,..=..,..]
>
> while „setup=list“ let you use
>
>   \setupfancybreak[one,two][..,..=..,..]
>
> and
>
>   \setupfancybreak[..,..=..,..]
>
>
> The key “command“ creates a bunch of macros, besides the „\define...“
> commands to create new environment and commands with your code it creates
> the following macros to access the values from your setup commands:
>
>   - \<Name>parameter
>   - \named<NAME>parameter
>   - \detokenized<NAME>parameter

In order to use these commads, you must set a value for \current<name>. 
For example, if you have

\define<name>[one][width=10cm]

In order to access the value of width of "one", you must do:

\def\current<name>{one}

\<name>parameter{width}

(I do not remember the distinction between \<name>parameter,
\named<name>paramter, and \detokenized<name>parameters).

> The command key has like the setup key the two values yes and list,
> with „command=yes“ you can write
>
>   \define<NAME>[one][..,..=..,..]
>
> or (clone a setup like \definehead[mysection][section])
>
>   \define<NAME>[two][one]
>
> while „command=list“ allows
>
>    \define<NAME>[one,two][..,..=..,..]
>
> or
>
>   \define<NAME>[two,three][one]
>

I did not know that cloning was possible. The \defineenumeration commands 
allows for

\defineenumeration[new][old][..=..]

This clones a selected options from old to new (using copyparamters) and 
then sets the values of the third arguments.

Would it make sense to add support for

\define<name>[two,three][one][..=..]?

>
> For parent it’s the best to give as argument always the same value
> as you defined for the namespace, e.g. for the fancybreak module
> one should write „parent=fancybreak“.

I thought that you have to write "parent=\????fancybreak".

Aditya