On Nov 10, 2004, at 7:48 PM, Joe Gregorio wrote:
-1 on PaceMustUnderstandElement, for the following reasons:
1. There is a mustUnderstand feature in SOAP and has proved of no value.
You may attribute that to there being very few compliant implementations
in SOAP, but that only leads me to my next point:
2. This is added complexity to the format that few, if any, developers
will implement.
As you report Dave Orchard said, this is complex to implement.
3. The Pace, as written, doesn't specify any concrete benefit. There is
only theoretical benefit. What situation, current or in the past, in
syndication formats, would a mustUnderstand element have helped?
I am not passionate about PaceMustUnderstandElement, if the WG doesn't want it, I'm OK with that. Having said that, the benefit is real easy to understand: it allows extensions to declare themselves compulsory. I can easily imagine extensions that might want to do this, but I grant that none have appeared yet.
The only place I disagree with Joe is his #2; I think that it's *not* hard to implement as specified. It would be if you could have MustUnderstand attributes scattered throughout the feed as you can in SOAP. In this proposal, you just have to read a list of namespace names at the front of the feed and exit if there are any there you don't know.
Questions for Joe:
1. Why do you think this is hard to implement?
2. Assuming I can persuade you that it's cheap, would you be OK with it even given the lack of use in SOAP?
-Tim
