Re: The furore over PUBLIC

At 00:40 31/03/97 -0500, Paul Prescod wrote:
[...]
>I think it is a sign of good design
>that we allow hooks for other people to extend our brilliance. It really
>annoys me when people use real comments (<!-- -->) for "magic" commands.
[...]
>Rather, they will completely
>ignore those parts of the standards until they are trying to figure out
>particular problems, such as how to insert processor specifing
>information, or implement persistent names. At that point a light will
>come on in their head, they will notice the convenient "hooks" in the
>specification, and they will implement something cool, like a URN
>resolver or SOCAT catalogs.

I admire your optimism. The implementors who have taken the time and 
trouble to read the spec and its underlying assumptions (8879 etc)
will certainly do this, but others may not, and if they hit lucky, 
they can arbitrarily define behaviour regardless of the spec hooks.

///Peter

Received on Monday, 31 March 1997 06:37:35 UTC