RE: [Editorial Draft] Extending and Versioning Languages Part 1

Bryan,

I think you've hit much of the nail on the head.  Our rough thinking is
that web browers have a "liberal" styles of versioning, and have all the
complexity that you've talked about.  Some people think that is good and
has helped web adoption, others think it is bad and has hurt web
adoption.  XML is to an extent a reaction to that.  

I think we are going to try to get to some exposition on some more
details of the styles of versioning.  I think we are also going to
attempt some mention of which kinds of distributed architectures work
best with which style of versioning.  I am not sure sure that we will be
able to, because there always seem to be counter-examples.  For example,
if we say "human-centered" aka HTML, then how do we add tcp/ip into
there, which specifically has a "liberal" style of versioning. 

So, I think we'll certainly get part of what you are looking for, but
maybe not all.  I hope the rest of the material is useful/helpful and
look forward to any additional comments.

Cheers,
Dave

> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-tag-request@w3.org [mailto:www-tag-request@w3.org] 
> On Behalf Of Bryan Rasmussen
> Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2006 1:05 AM
> To: www-tag@w3.org
> Subject: [Editorial Draft] Extending and Versioning Languages Part 1
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> The statement that "The "liberal" style of versioning has a 
> significant downside in that it can lead to very fragile and 
> hard to evolve software because the "liberal"ness is 
> difficult to code and it does not force producers to be 
> correct in what they produce, causing a vicious cycle of 
> complexity." Should probably be amended to a less broad 
> assertion. This liberal style of versioning is difficult to 
> code in the large mainstream languages, and in the more 
> commonly used architectures, but there do seem to be 
> architectures and languages that would be extremely well 
> suited to handling a liberal style.
> 
> Cheers,
> Bryan Rasmussen
> 
>

Received on Tuesday, 3 October 2006 15:56:56 UTC