Re: Deprecation of X

On Fri, 2011-04-08 at 13:27 +0100, Richard Cyganiak wrote:
> On 8 Apr 2011, at 12:38, Nathan wrote:
> > Rather than strictly deprecating certain features, can we modularize them in to another "extensions" specification, or working note, perhaps together with steps publishers / consumers can take to factor them out?
> > 
> > Else, are we versioning "RDF" such that people can tell, oh this is RDF 1 which supports x,y,z and this is RDF 1.x which does not?
> 
> At the Stanford workshop there was a lot of talk about “weak deprecation”, meaning something like: Conforming implementations MUST still support it, but newly created data SHOULD NOT use it. There is no intention of removing the feature entirely in a future version of the spec.
> 
> Going much further than that probably is not desirable, nor really possible given the constraints set by the charter.

When I was writing up these issues, I started to use the term "weakly
deprecate", then I stopped and looked up the word "deprecate":

        In computer software or authoring programs standards and
        documentation, the term deprecation is applied to software
        features that are superseded and should be avoided. Although
        deprecated features remain in the current version, their use may
        raise warning messages recommending alternative practices, and
        deprecation may indicate that the feature will be removed in the
        future. Features are deprecated—rather than being removed—in
        order to provide backward compatibility and give programmers who
        have used the feature time to bring their code into compliance
        with the new standard.
        
        -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deprecation
        
Isn't this exactly what we mean?   We could deprecate rdf:Seq but say we
wont remove it for at least 99 more years.

For some reason, though, everyone seems to think "deprecate" means
"remove".   So maybe we do have to make up some new word.   I'd rather
just be clear about them being "deprecated-not-removed".

      -- Sandro

Received on Friday, 8 April 2011 16:55:34 UTC