RE: Access-Control: Proposed restructuring

On Wed, 16 Jan 2008, David Orchard wrote:
> > 
> > Given that this is a purely editorial matter, I'd rather we just left 
> > this exlusively up to the editor of the specification, lest we fall 
> > into a "design-by-committee" mindset where none of us take ultimate 
> > responsibility for the spec.
> 
> The style of the document is not editorial at all.

If you are not making any changes to the normative requirements, and that 
therefore the document would be interchangeable with the other version 
without affecting any existing implementations, users, test cases, or 
tutorials, then it is purely editorial. It might be a big editorial 
change, but it is still purely editorial.


> I think the WG has the responsibility for it's output.

Committees are an extremely bad place for the buck to end. You need a 
person with ultimate responsibility if you want quality work.


> I see.  So when I missed a level of parenthesis
> if( scheme(item) != null &&  ((scheme(item) != scheme (origin)))
> 
> That implies that english is better than pseudo-code?

No. My point is that you haven't defined the precedence of operators in 
your pseudo-code. You haven't defined the meaning of parentheses in your 
pseudo-code. You haven't defined your constants (null) your operators 
(!=), you haven't even defined what "if" means or how block-level scoping 
works. You haven't defined if "if" blocks work by indentation, block 
scope, or with a terminating keyword (all of which are options used by 
real languages). Your pseudo-code is less well defined than the English 
prose it replaces. (If it wasn't, it wouldn't be _pseudo_-code, and it 
would effectively be a reference implementation.)


> Further, the current English style has problems.  I find text like "If
> the item list has no next list item go to the next step in the overall
> set of steps. " to be very confusing.

I think it's fine to point out confusing sentences to the editor to have 
them be clarified. I agree that a comma and the word "then" in the above 
sentence would make it easier to read.


> I also don't know what "down to earth" means.

Fundamentally that may be the problem here...

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Wednesday, 16 January 2008 21:17:23 UTC