Re: MyHAP ?? (was Protocol questions)

[Gerry Duprey <gerry@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Howdy,

few comments:

> I haven't had much time to contribute myself this year but can see his
> point as I would now need to re-examine the protocol documents before
I can
> even think about doing any more xPL work.  If only to ensure that I am

But, and I think this is the key, you could write an xPL app exactly as you
would have a year ago and it would work fine.  The few changes that were
done were minor and backward compatible, so you did not have to do them.

Better yet, if you use any of the supported xPL frameworks to build you app
on, you wouldn't have to make any changes to your xPL app -- it'll work
exactly as it did and in fact the code interface to the framework wouldn't
have changed either.

It may have seemed like a lot of change because they were being discussed
actively on the list, but when boiled down, there were very few changes and
all are backward compatible.

> in-line with the new thinking.  The one area that I strongly agree
with
> Tony on is that if as much time was spent developing new apps as is
spent
> discussing the protocol we would have a far more expansive system.

Actually, from my perspective, I've probably spent 100+ hours in the last
few months on xPL development and I've posted all of it, including source,
for anyone to use. Discussion of the small number of changes has consumed a
very small part of that. It was in the process of creating what I hope will
be an important app for xPL in general (a generic user interface creator)
that, for me at least, a number of the boundary conditions of xPL came up
and needed some discussion to nail down.

> I'm not trying to stir it up or offend in anyway as I know lots of
people
> have put lots of time into this project.  I just think that people
have
> their own standpoints and we should respect them for their
convictions.

Absolutely true.  In my case, I really just wanted to understand what Tonys
motivations were.  I have a fair amount of respect for him for helping get
xPL off the ground (along with others) and when someone like that changes
course, for my own edification, I'd like to find out as much of the
reasoning as possible.  I think we've heard about all there is at this
point
and I appreciate (though perhaps do not agree with) his position.

I do feel it's important that the changes are looked at in the proper light
as a small set of incremental, compatible evolutions to the protocol.  As I
posted a while back on the subject, in the years I've been dealing with
various protocols, the two things I've seen kill them was frequent, large
scale changes or the "nothing will ever change -- it was perfect from
the
get go" set in stone approach.  The former scares people off because
everything they wrote is suddenly busted.  The later rarely works because
virtually nothing is done perfect the first time.  I think xPL's course to
date has been an excellent balance of keeping a stable protocol with a
priority on backward compatibility while still allowing the occasional,
well
discussed, incremental moves forward.

No back to doing something productive :-)

Gerry
--
Gerry Duprey
Ann Arbor, MI 48103
http://www.cdp1802.org