Re: "Pave The Cowpaths" Design Principle

On May 19, 2007, at 11:28 AM, Gervase Markham wrote:

> Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
>> Is that really the key difference? rel also left remaining names  
>> free for author use. Is moving from 0 to 1 predefined names really  
>> a much bigger deal than moving from N to N+1?
>
> Is moving from 0 to 1 holes in your boat really a much bigger deal  
> than moving from N to N+1? :-)
>
> 0 was a promise (either implicit or explicit in the spec),

The spec also said class was free for "general use by user agents", so  
in fact the spec explicitly did not promise values would be free of  
predefined meaning.

> whereas for rel, N were given and people were warned that there  
> might be N+M in the future.

The thing is, they invented some nonstandard useful new values many of  
which we are adopting as standard without controversy. Seems directly  
analogous. Whether people were "warned" or not will have no effect on  
the rate of false positives.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Sunday, 20 May 2007 01:32:35 UTC