- From: C. M. Sperberg-McQueen <cmsmcq@blackmesatech.com>
- Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2022 10:58:54 -0700
- To: Steven Pemberton <Steven.Pemberton@cwi.nl>
- Cc: "C. M. Sperberg-McQueen" <cmsmcq@blackmesatech.com>, public-ixml@w3.org
Two small corrections. > On 11,Jan2022, at 9:42 AM, Steven Pemberton <Steven.Pemberton@cwi.nl> wrote: > > https://www.w3.org/2022/01/11-ixml-minutes.html > > … Part of the discussion of pragmas is recorded thus: Michael: A pragma should be allowed to respond in any way it wants to pragmas, including stopping and starting a game. Steven: I disagree. Michael: I think you are right to be concerned. I think a more accurate reflection of what I remember intending to say about the meaning of pragmas would be more like: Michael: There is in general no way to constrain the meaning of effect of pragmas; as an office-mate of mine used to say, there is (and can be) nothing stopping anyone from defining a pragma which has the defined meaning ‘when this pragma is encountered, the compiler should shell out and start a game of Rogue’. The “should” in the existing wording suggests I believe there is some policy question to argue about here. There are plenty of policy questions, but I think our only choice with respect to the possible meanings of pragmas and other annotations is to be clear up front that we cannot constrain them effectively. Whether that is what Steven was disagreeing with I cannot say. The second paraphrase has also lost a little context. A fuller account would be: Michael: I think you are right that pragmas have the potential to give rise to interoperability issues; that is why the proposal includes the requirement (or recommendation, if the group prefers) that processors be able to ignore even pragmas they understand. Here, the existing wording suggests that I believed Steven had pointed to a flaw, weakness, or gap in the pragmas proposal; I think he pointed to a real potential issue for any pragmas proposal, but one that I think the proposal Tom and I put forward addresses explicitly (and I think successfully). Michael ******************************************** C. M. Sperberg-McQueen Black Mesa Technologies LLC cmsmcq@blackmesatech.com http://www.blackmesatech.com ********************************************
Received on Monday, 17 January 2022 17:59:13 UTC