On 6 December 2010 19:01, Shlomi Fish <shlo...@iglu.org.il> wrote: > Hi Yves, > > On Monday 06 December 2010 10:42:23 demerphq wrote: >> On 5 December 2010 07:54, Naveed Massjouni <navee...@gmail.com> wrote: >> > This thread is really depressing. Personally, I like all of Shlomi's >> > suggestions. I can't fathom why bareword global filehandles are still >> > pervasive in the perl docs. But instead of the community getting to >> > discuss the merits of the changes and then have some kind of vote, one >> > maintainer with a big ego can just say, "VETO VETO VETO ... my docs >> > are already perfect!" >> >> I think there is a difference in modifying someone elses >> documentation, and writing a totally new doc. I also think there is a >> big difference between patches to code which fix bugs or add >> functionality, and patches to documentation that is not actually >> wrong, but instead of a style no longer in fashion. To me it is a bit >> like suggesting that Shakespeare needs to be "modernized" because of >> the archaic English he used. >> >> However, if you, or Shlomi think you can write a better perlipc.pod >> from scratch, then you should do so, or any other doc. >> >> If we think it is qualitatively superior then we would probably >> replace the existing version. >> >> More likely we would end up with two docs. And the community would be >> richer for it. >> >> So I think we are right in respecting a given documents artistic >> rights to have their vision presented as they wished, within reason. >> We can always decide not to use the doc at all if we feel they are >> being unreasonable. I doubt you would get a consensus for such an >> extreme action amongst the committers though. I think we generally >> dont feel as strongly about these changes as you seem to. Although I >> respect your reasons for doing so. >> > > Aren't you describing territoriality here? > > * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territoriality_%28nonverbal_communication%29 > > * http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral- > bazaar/ar01s11.html > > (sorry for the second broken link).
I don't know. I'm not even sure that my view is rational or self consistent. I do know that I feel there is some important qualitative difference between modifying code, and modifying a stand alone document like perlipc. > I'm in no position to write my own perlipc.pod from scratch - I'd rather build > on the efforts of tchrist and other contributors. And as Aristotle noted we > don't need another document with the same purpose. And I'd like contributors > to discuss changes to the documentation that they originated based on their > merit and not "veto" them, just because they are territorial about their > documentation. This is also because the documentation affects and reflects on > the collective community of developers and users, and we are all held > responsible for it. Again, I am not sure I agree. I dont feel that *all* of Toms rejections of your changes *are* due to territoriality, although I suspect a few of them might be, and that his general tone suggests he does feel that way. On the other hand I just don't agree with you on some of them. For instance using || instead of or. I prefer the latter, like you I believe, however I actually think in some important respects the other style is better. If you ONLY ever use || and always use parens on function calls then you will never get bitten by weird precedence problems like this: return $foo or $bar; which I see in code more often than I would prefer. Now, like I said, I actually prefer 'or' style, with no parens. But I also know all the places where that can bite you, because I've been bitten. :-) Now you want Tom to change to a style that is objectively inferior in at least one or two ways. You haven't really demonstrated to me that you understand why he prefers his style, or demonstrated to me that you have a cogent argument for using the 'or' form beyond aesthetics. Now on some things I agree. But enough I don't agree with, or think its a dicey argument, that I think Toms opinions should be given extra consideration when we discuss them. >> > What incentive would I or Shlomi or anyone else have to spend their >> > time to try to improve the docs if this is how things work. >> >> We all have different incentives. I would hope that you dont feel that >> a predicate on your contributing is the right to change anything you >> wish however you wish. That is not how it works. No matter how much I >> wish it did sometimes. >> >> I hope you stay positive about contributing to perl, and find other >> subjects where you can do so. We have a lot more to look into than >> Tom's docs. > > The way I see it what happened was that I wrote an email with aspects of > perlipc.pod that I found lacking, and not idiomatic up to recent best > practices, thcrist replying that he doesn't like any of the changes and > VETOing them (without saying why the status quo was better, just by giving > other irrelevant reasons), and some other people discussing why they thought > what I or other people said had a relative merit and should be implemented > (althugh possibly, like Abigail said, not at the utmost priority). I didn't > even start patching perlipc yet (at least not after tchrist's rewrite of its > original version which forced me to restart my work.). > > I also think that the Perl 5 documentation *should* reflect the agreed best > practices (and I don't necessarily mean Damian's PBP). We had lexical > filehandles since at least perl-5.6.x and everyone agrees that they are a best > practice, and "use strict;" is also a good idea, and we encourage everybody to > do "use warnings;" instead of "-w". Therefore, we should practice what we > preach, and make sure that the core docs don't unnecessarily demonstrate > paradigms that have been agreed to be bad for years. Again I think you go a bit too far here. I do agree with the sentiment tho. cheers, Yves -- perl -Mre=debug -e "/just|another|perl|hacker/"
