Re: [Widgets] Widget Gallery RSS like sharing format

On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 2:14 PM, Robin Berjon <robin@berjon.com> wrote:
> On Mar 18, 2009, at 11:33 , Andrew Welch wrote:
>>
>> - when multiple versions of the xml exist, you need some way to
>> differentiate them other than checking for the existence of certain
>> elements/attribute
>
> You state that as a requirement but don't explain what the use case for it
> is. Personally, I don't see any while I see several pointing in the other
> direction.
>
>> That's how XSLT 2.0 does it, and I think XHTML 2.0, but I notice XSD
>> 1.1 is going down a different route...
>
> XSLT 2.0 is a programming language (as opposed to a configuration file for
> instance), and if you're using 2.0 features you want it to break early (IIRC
> they also changed the semantics of some bits). Me, given the changes, I
> would've gone with a new namespace but that's water under the bridge.
>
> XHTML 2.0 is not trying to be backwards compatible, that's HTML5's job. It
> initially had a different namespace, and its recent attempt to reverting to
> using the XHTML 1.x namespace is IMHO a poor decision that I am rather
> confident will be overturned (if it hasn't already).
>
> The reason there isn't One True Way of doing XML versioning is because the
> use cases vary across languages. If you add a <pony> element to SVG it's
> probably fine if it's not displayed as you can fallback, but if you add a
> <transfer-me-money/> element to a SOAP message you probably don't want
> people to ignore it.
>
> Our usage scenarios for improved configurations don't involve the sort of
> stringent versioning that would require variants on @version or
> @mustUnderstand. Furthermore, the complexity of using a version attribute
> has to take into account the fact that the widget stack is modularised: what
> happens when a separate specification (signatures, window modes, etc.) adds
> an element to the configuration file (as they well can)? Do you increment
> the version? Add other version attributes? Add some tokens as in
> version="1.0 +dsig +wm"?
>
> I understand the draw to flagging versions, it somehow "feels neater", and
> that's why people tend to want to throw them in (I just made the very same
> comments to Bondi). But for our usage scenarios, it neither helps nor
> scales.
>

FWIW, as the editor, I agree with Robin. Nothing is gained by adding
explicit versioning to the spec.

Kind regards,
Marcos




-- 
Marcos Caceres
http://datadriven.com.au

Received on Monday, 20 April 2009 12:57:36 UTC