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

David,

On 10/3/06, David Orchard <dorchard@bea.com> wrote:
>
> 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 the complexity comes from the extensions themselves, not from
handling them liberally.  In my experience developing both a Web
browser and a non-browser based international data distribution
network, liberal versioning is far easier to codify (because it takes
less code) and also yields more evolvable code.

Mark.