Re: stepping backward

--- John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com> wrote:
> Sam Hunting wrote:
> 
> > As I understand the principle, whatever breaks existing documents
> is
> > immoral. This applies whether the version number increments or not.
> 
> I, at least, don't think it's immoral (which I do not introduce as
> a technical term) to make changes in meaning if the version number
> is changed; indeed, that is the purpose of version numbers.
> I just think it would be a bloody pain in the neck for very little
> gain.  Let's save incrementing the version number until there is some
> user benefit to supporting 1.0.1 or 1.1 or 2.0.

"changes in meaning" does not equal "breaking existing documents." It
is the latter that could be characterized -- perhaps I should replace
that term with "immoral" in order to seem less judgemental -- as
"morally problematic."

Here is the thread from which I picked the term "immoral" --

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/xml-uri/2000May/0229.html

<message>
<subject-line>The Moral Problem stated (was: Use cases)</subject-line>

Michael Rys wrote:

> The problem is, that people may chose or
> may have chosen to make use of the literal interpretation of
namespaceuri
> comparisons for their own use over which we do not have control. They
> authored their documents according to a valid W3C rec. If we go and
change
> that rec, the correction should not break their existing documents.

This deserves to be written up in letters of gold, for it is the Moral
Problem in a nutshell.

Still waiting for a statement of the Technical Vision/Aesthetic Problem
with this level of clarity...

Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis um dies! || John Cowan 
[snip]
</message>

S.








=====
<? "To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life."
    -- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations ?>

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Received on Saturday, 3 June 2000 11:34:49 UTC