Versioning and backwards compatibility

Hi guys,

at various points, different implementations have made different messes of  
particular terms, or we have decided we want new ones.

I think we should try to be conservative about changing the namespace we  
use, except that by the time we go to Proposed Recommendation it would be  
nice to have one that hadn't been used for a bunch of dodgy content.

This implies at least one further change of namespace. In addition, we may  
decide in between times to change something. It makes sense to me,  
thinking about implementors, to change a term when we decide to change its  
meaning, which either means we can use some other string in the same  
namespace, or provide a new namespace for the new version.

One benefit of doing things this way is that it allows us or someone else  
to come along afterwards and write OWL statements that actually allow  
tools to automatically convert old EARL of some kind or other to whatever  
the latest spec is, rather than having to rely on changing the namespace  
and simply throwing away all old content, which would IMHO be a mistake.

I guess this isn't yet an issue, since we haven't changed the meaning of  
any existing terms. So it should sit on the agenda queue while we figure  
out more important stuff, for the moment.

cheers

Chaals

-- 
Charles McCathieNevile                              chaals@opera.com
          hablo español - je parle français - jeg lærer norsk
   Here's one we prepared earlier:   http://www.opera.com/download

Received on Monday, 30 May 2005 01:45:00 UTC