- From: Andy Seaborne <andy.seaborne@epimorphics.com>
- Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2011 22:47:43 +0100
- To: Sandro Hawke <sandro@w3.org>
- CC: Richard Cyganiak <richard@cyganiak.de>, nathan@webr3.org, RDF WG <public-rdf-wg@w3.org>
On 08/04/11 17:55, Sandro Hawke wrote: > 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 that are superseded and should be avoided.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 -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deprecation If and when things are deprecated "features that are superseded"+"recommending alternative practices" we need to provide better alternatives, not just say "best not to use X". The requirement is still there. Andy > > 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 Monday, 11 April 2011 21:48:16 UTC