[Bug 1467] [FO] Cleanup of argument cardinality

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=1467


holstege@mathling.com changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
             Status|NEW                         |RESOLVED
         Resolution|                            |WONTFIX




------- Additional Comments From holstege@mathling.com  2005-07-21 20:58 -------
The working group considered this comment at its meeting today
and decided not to accept it.

A number of divergent reasons were given for not accepting these changes, 
including:

For some of the specific cases, returning empty sequences instead of 
failing were regarded as unhelpful to users.  Providing errors improves
usability, it was felt, rather than undermining it.

The consistency argument was not compelling, in that consistency with some 
functions would speak to one decision, and consistency with other functions 
would speak to the opposite decision. The spec has a whole range of functions 
and operators, some of which accept empty sequences and some of which don't, so 
full consistency is not achievable.

For the "class B" functions, changing the semantics of well-settled and long-
standing functions in the absense of a compelling argument to change is 
disruptive.

Received on Thursday, 21 July 2005 20:58:55 UTC