14 Jun
2010
14 Jun
'10
12:02 a.m.
On Sun, Jun 13, 2010 at 5:35 PM, <fons(a)kokkinizita.net> wrote:
So what purpose do these things have if they are not
meant for a
human reader and irrelevant to any software ?
"There are only two really hard problems in computer science: naming
things and cache invalidation" - Phil Karlton
In this case, its about naming things, including *relationships*
between things. The names and the relationships need to be defined and
described carefully, precisely and in ways that have universally
consistent meaning. The names are not irrelevant to software - they
define properties of a plugin, metadata if you will, that some hosts
may need or want to know. Sure, its easy to come with ad-hoc,
apparently usable schemes for such things. Most of them go wrong only
after they've become entrenched and used as widely as they will ever
be.
how do you describe that a plugin can use extension X? what is the
name of extension X? how do you describe the fact that a plugin is
considered by its author to belong to a particular category within a
particular categorization of plugins? what is the name of the
category? what is the name of the categorization?