Re: Comments on August 22 editors' draft from section 4.3 through 7 intro

Norman Walsh wrote:
> / ht@inf.ed.ac.uk (Henry S. Thompson) was heard to say:
> | Norman Walsh writes:
> |> | 5.11
> |> |
> |> |  I'm unhappy with a perhaps-unintended consequence of the way output
> |> |  ports on compound steps are handled here.  Seems to me this is a
> |> |  perfectly good p:for-each:
> |> |
> |> |   <p:for-each name="saveThem">
> |> |
> |> |    <p:output port="result">
> |> |     <p:pipe step="saveThem" port="current"/>
> |> |    </p:output>
> |>
> |> That makes my brain hurt. Output ports bind to step outputs. If you
> |> want that, stick in p:identity step that reads the input and produces
> |> an output.
> |
> | Sigh -- I don't see why we should treat these specially, but I don't
> | suppose it makes much difference.  If no-one else cares, I'll let this
> | go.
> 
> I didn't think we *were* treating them specially. It seems to me
> that allowing an output port to be bound to an input port *would be*
> treating it specially. I'm confused.

I'm with Henry, FWIW. From within a compound step, its inputs are 
*sources* and its outputs are *sinks*. A source should be able to pipe 
to any sink (and vice versa: a sink should be able to take any source). 
Disallowing an input to pipe straight to an output seems like special 
casing to me.

Cheers,

Jeni
-- 
Jeni Tennison
http://www.jenitennison.com

Received on Tuesday, 28 August 2007 18:19:17 UTC