Re: deprecation issues

David,

At 10:50 AM 4/10/03 -0400, you wrote:
>[...]
>LH>40 -- the first sentence of GL7 is "A deprecated feature is an
>LH>existing feature that has been outdated by newer constructs or is no
>LH>longer viable." I think it is our intention that this encompass
>LH>"obsolete".
>
>But do you mean "obsolete" in the same way that Ian meant the word
>when he wrote, as part of issue 40, "E.g., HTML 4.0 obsoleted a few
>elements."?

Apparently not.  Upon rereading, he seems to mean "removed", and that is 
also implied in the 2nd pgph of GL7.

>I think we know the difference between a deprecated
>feature and a removed feature, and GL 7 is only about the former,
>but do we agree whether "obsolete" means deprecated or removed?

I think we did today.  Obsolete is closest to "removed".  But apparently 
not identical, according to the distinction that Mark drew.  I.e., Mark 
indicated:

deprecated -> obsolete -> removed

where there was a distinction between obsolete and removed (maybe obsolete 
is the "feature state" and removed is the "document state"?)  I'm not going 
to reopen the issue, but my own intuitive use of obsolete was different:

obsolete -> deprecated -> removed

(I.e., a feature becomes obsolete in practice, and that is reflected by its 
deprecation in the specification, and someday it is then removed from the 
specification.)

-Lofton.

Received on Thursday, 10 April 2003 12:46:21 UTC