On Wednesday 16 April 2008 22:57:21 David E. Wheeler wrote: > In principal I completely agree with you, chromatic (that is, I agree > with the principal you espouse here; my agreement is not purely > theoretical ;-)). But how does that work in practice? Specifically > with regard to YAML diagnostic keys in TAP? What do you suggest? Maybe > just reserving the keys we know we need now, and then adding more > later as we need them, even though doing so might conflict with other > folks using such keys? > > I just want to know how we might put what you've said into practice.
That's my suggestion. Figure out the minimal set of keys that we expect to use in the near future and reserve those. Document them. Suggest that we might add more keys later, if there's a rough consensus and working code. Don't forbid people from adding their own keys, but recommend that they bring them up for public discussion. It's a combination of the once, twice, refactor rule and the IETF's "no standards without at least two implementations, and one of them public" rule. -- c
