Re: ISSUE-53: mediatypereg - suggest closing on 2009-09-03

On Sat, 5 Sep 2009, Mark Baker wrote:
> 
> However, there's an issue with with 4.4.11.1, "Creating an outline" 
> where you specify an algorithm for outline creation.  It's not 
> *necessarily* a problem that algorithms are used in this way - sometimes 
> that's the simplest approach that will yield the fewest interpretation 
> problems, though it usually comes at the cost of legibility to humans as 
> well as unnecessarily restricting implementations.  So, for example, I 
> think it's reasonable to specify the parser as an algorithm because of 
> the enormous complexity (though others may disagree with me).  But in 
> the case of outlines, it seems overkill to me because it isn't 
> particularly complex and could be easily, and perhaps even more 
> concisely, specified declaratively.

Could you provide declarative prose that describes the outline algorithm 
unambiguously, with the same results?

I'd love to use declarative prose instead of algorithms, I just don't know 
how to do it in a readable and coherent way while keeping it precise.

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

Received on Monday, 14 September 2009 10:30:15 UTC