- From: Marcos Caceres <marcosc@opera.com>
- Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 09:40:38 +0100
- To: Andrew Welch <andrew.j.welch@gmail.com>
- Cc: Robin Berjon <robin@berjon.com>, Thomas Landspurg <thomas.landspurg@gmail.com>, SUZANNE Benoit RD-SIRP-ISS <benoit.suzanne@orange-ftgroup.com>, public-webapps@w3.org
On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 9:35 AM, Andrew Welch <andrew.j.welch@gmail.com> wrote: > 2009/3/17 Robin Berjon <robin@berjon.com>: >> On Mar 17, 2009, at 13:24 , Marcos Caceres wrote: >>> >>> Agreed. Thinking forward, how do you recommend we identify version 2.0 >>> of the widget configuration file format (or should we just cross that >>> bridge when we get to it?) ? >> >> Personally, I would recommend that we don't :) Version identifiers are >> largely useless and experience shows that users use them wrong (e.g. a bunch >> of SVG out there that's labelled as 1.1 is really 1.2, but people just >> copy-paste the root element). >> >> There are strategies to implement versioning of XML vocabularies which don't >> require having a version identifier. These are generally based on an >> "ignore" approach whereby elements and attributes that the processor doesn't >> know about are silently skipped. That means we can add new features in the >> next revision and it won't break older UAs. If at some point we make >> breaking changes, then we just change the namespace. >> >> Note that this needs to be defined in v1, so no, I think we have to cross >> that bridge now. SVG includes this strategy: >> >> http://www.w3.org/TR/SVGMobile12/implnote.html#UnsupportedProps >> >> It is worth pointing out that porting the same strategy to the configuration >> document would be simpler. > > Are you sure changing the namespace is preferable to a version > attribute? Seems very drastic, and usually it's best to avoid doing > it as it makes all tools that process existing markup redundant. > > Also, you mention most users "just copy-paste the root element" - > surely you'd still have the problem if you change the namespace? > > At the moment, I don't think there is any establised "right way" when > versioning xml, but changing the namespace is a bad idea. I agree. Changing the namespace is a bad idea. I didn't get the sense that this is what Robin was suggesting, however. From a quick glance at the SVG link above, I didn't see anything relating to changing the namespace (though it was a super quick glance, so I might have missed it!:)) -- Marcos Caceres http://datadriven.com.au
Received on Wednesday, 18 March 2009 08:41:26 UTC