Re: Updated versioning strategies doc [XMLVersioning-41 ISSUE-41]

On Thu, 2007-09-20 at 16:16 -0700, David Orchard wrote:
> - updated the introduction to hit the 3 main messages right up front
> http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/versioning-compatibility-strategies-20070920.html
 

Dave and I talked over this new material. I can now "see the forest
for the trees" better as a result. This is the bit with
the 3 main messages:

[[
This finding describes general problems and techniques in evolving
systems in compatible ways. These techniques are designed to allow
compatible changes. A number of design patterns and rules are discussed
with a focus towards enabling versioning. There are a few crucial good
practices that enable forwards compatible versioning from version 1 of a
language.

  The first is to specify the language is extensible.

  The second is to specify that any text of the language with
  extensions can be treated as if the extensions were not present.

  The third is to specify an algorithm for how a text of the
  language with a version identifier that is unknown can be treated
  as if the version identifier was known.
]]

(emphasis added by way of list formatting).

> I expect that these will be revised as per Dan and my action items.

I offer the above for discussion in today's telcon under...

  ACTION-51 on David Orchard to And Dan work together to articulate
    the story that the TAG wants to tell.


I had some ideas for working on the organization and prose, but
I didn't get very far with them. I think some of the things
presented as "Good Practice" notes would work better as a
pattern language in the sense
of http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?PatternLanguage

I gave it a try with http://esw.w3.org/topic/IgnoreUnknownTags ...
I think I/we need to do 2 or 3 more of those to see whether
it's a good organizational technique overall.


-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

Received on Thursday, 4 October 2007 15:28:10 UTC