A. Pagaltzis writes: > * Smylers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2007-03-02 22:55]: > > > A. Pagaltzis writes: > > > > > * Smylers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2007-03-01 21:45]: > > > > > > ... how do you tell whether `bastract` is a typo or extension > > > field? > > > > You can't. But equally you can't tell if "hints: > > test-reporter: cc_arthur" is a typo or not. (Admittedly if > > it's a typo for "abstract" then it's a particularly _bad_ typo > > ...) > > Yes, you can’t know anything about extension elements. That’s a > given. > > But if you contain them in an extension hook and disallow > arbitrary placement of extension elements, then you can at least > validate the rest of the document with strict rules.
Unless the mistake somebody makes is it forget whether a field is in the 'officially sanctioned' category or is an extension. > > > I think adding a `hints` field which is a hash of hashes, where > > > the key in `hints` acts as a namespace, is the best proposition so > > > far. > > > > ... I still think that the 'hints' level is unnecessary: for any key > > in 'hints', can you imagine a situation where it's _also_ a key > > top-level key? Think how confusing it would be to have both > > 'test-reporter' and 'hints: test-reporter'. > > I’m not sure this would be particularly common problem? Exactly my point! If any 'hints: foo' field gets widespread use then the spec would avoid defining a clashing 'foo' field, because that would be far too confusing. So in practice a given field is only going to exist either at the top level or in 'hints'. And from a user's point of view that distinction can look quite arbitrary -- it's basically an artefact of which process somebody went through to get the field added. That doesn't seem like a useful distinction to inflict on users. > The point of `hints` is simply to contain extensions such that every > part of the document other than what’s under `hints` is precisely > specified. There are other ways of achieving this, possibly even going further and specifying which extension fields being used. For example there could be a field 'extension-fields' which lists them (with their types?). Smylers
