David E. Wheeler wrote:
On Apr 18, 2008, at 10:50, chromatic wrote:
My argument was complex: solve the real problem or don't solve it.
The in
between position is silly and won't make anyone happy. (However, the
first
person to suggest RDF triples gets a lecture from *all* parties.)
Yes. The choices, as I see them, are:
1. Do we start out conservative, and loosen things up as the cow paths
indicate (Ovid's position)?
2. Do we start out liberal, allowing anything, and formalize whatever
turns up in the cow paths (what I'm now suggesting)?
3. Or, do we go the middle road, have a relatively mild conservative
position (reserve lowercase ASCII), and tight or loosen up as the cow
paths indicate (Schwern's position)?
I get that you're against 3. I'm against 1 (no chance for cow paths at
all, in my view) but can live with 2 or 3.
Good sum up. Before I give my own sum up I'd like to propose an alternative
way to look at the problem.
We all seem to mostly agree that "user vs user" is at least potentially a
problem. I'm balking at the solution: prefixing. It wrecks readability,
convergence and extensibility. I hate solving a problem by causing another one.
The prefixing solution sucks, but it's all we have... and that's a bad place
to be. Rather than arguing about a sucky solution, does anyone have another
solution to offer? If a better solution can be found then the arguments go away.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled frustrating argument.
I agree about #1, too restrictive too early, no cow paths can form.
#2 is problematic as it offers no stability but for the official keys, a set
which will grow slowly. I agree with Ovid that stability is important. It
potentially places us in the same position as Perl 5 is right now. Somebody
at some point is going to argue that if we add a new key somebody in the wild
might already be using it to do something else. At that point I will laugh
and laugh and laugh and then cry.
#3 is just #2 following an existing cow path. In short, we have a good idea
that official vs user is going to be a problem. Is anyone arguing it won't?
We have a simple, elegant solution to it that doesn't cause another problem.
The cost/benefit ratio is excellent. So why wait?
chromatic's argument is that unless we solve both A (official vs user) and B
(user vs user) we shouldn't bother solving A at all. It's not very pragmatic.
If A and B were coupled, if you couldn't solve A without solving B, then I'd
understand. But that hasn't been demonstrated. If solving A blocked solving
B, I'd understand that. But the proposed solution to B (prefixing) remains
available if needed and it's not like this is the final version of TAP.
In short, what is the harm of solving the understood "official vs user"
problem while leaving the fuzzier "user vs user" for later when we have more
information and experience? (Note, this is distinct from "user vs user will
not be a problem").
--
3. Not allowed to threaten anyone with black magic.
-- The 213 Things Skippy Is No Longer Allowed To Do In The U.S. Army
http://skippyslist.com/list/
