Re: string-length example

Kay, Michael wrote:
 > Shakespeare of course was violent and offensive,

It that what qualifies this sentence as example for your spec? I'm sure 
you'll find many more violent and offensive sentences then, good luck.

Shakespeare wrote the sentence as part of some play or fictional story. 
How does that justify putting it into a technical specification, without 
context or source?

It sure reflects thoughtlessness to copy "first we kill the lawyers" 
into the spec and justify this by saying it was written by some 
well-known writer.

There's an endless list of sentences which were written by famous people 
which, when taken out of context, are inappropriate and offensive in 
their new contexts. I'm not sure how that's surprising or why it would 
be desirable to do.

 > but they allowed freedom of speech in his day.

Of course you are free to say what you want, but you must be aware that 
copying such a sentence without context and without providing the source 
may be seen as highly offensive by many, especially by lawyers.

I didn't say you would not have freedom of speech.

I would be ashamed to refer a lawyer (who might be my client in an XSLT 
project) to this draft spec, and I would not do so.

Instead of accusing me of trying to limit your freedom of speech, it 
would be much more productive to explain why you think the example 
should remain in the spec, and if it should remain then add a pointer to 
the source of the quote to the spec.

Tobi

-- 
http://www.pinkjuice.com/

Received on Monday, 8 September 2003 05:08:06 UTC