fn:ranks design

Dimitre Novatchev <dnovatchev@gmail.com> writes:
>> Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com> writes:
>> I basically can't see any reason for making fn:ranks different from fn:sort in areas where they are doing the same thing, other than the fact that you don't like the design, and I don't think that's a good enough reason.
>
> Not anything personal, but as a future user of this function I would hate to enter unnecessarily () for the collations argument, every time I call this function. We often neglect how the user would feel having every time to specify an unnecessary argument: time-consuming, distracting, error-prone.

I appreciate your perspective. I submit that there is an alternative perspective: two functions that do very similar things should have the same signature. Having to remember which signature is which is also time-consuming, distracting, and error-prone.

Which of these two perspectives is correct, or at least better, is a matter of opinion, not of fact. 

Asserting that an opinion is a fact does not make it so.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

--
Norm Tovey-Walsh
Saxonica