Summary and call for discussion on text proposal

[Gregory Collins]

Hi Ian,

On Sun, Nov 7, 2010 at 10:43 PM, Ian Lynagh <igloo at earth.li> wrote:
>
> Then, in the call for consensus, "Say nothing" means "you're prepared to
> accept the current proposal" so I needed to "Raise objection. Objections
> need accompanying reasoning".

You would vote no if this minor naming issue (again, to which both
sides have reasonable arguments IMO) wasn't resolved to your liking?
That's the question on the table as far as I'm concerned. Because I
have a feeling that Bryan is close to taking his ball and going home,
and if I were in his shoes I'm not sure I'd feel differently.


>> which colour to paint the bike shed.
>
> I (perhaps not surprisingly) disagree with your characterisation of the
> naming discussion.

:)


> We are not talking about whether a function should be named breakString,
> breakSubstring, breakStr, breakList, ...
>
> Rather, we are discussing a fundamental design decision for the
> platform: whether it is more important to have global consistency of HP
> packages, or to have each package have a locally optimal API. In this
> case, whether 2 functions in different packages should have the same
> name or not.

I'm not saying I don't see your point -- I'm saying that Bryan clearly
doesn't want to make this change, he has fairly good reasons for
wanting to keep his library the way it is, nobody seems to be
respecting his wishes in the matter, and ultimately it's my feeling
that the issue is not important enough to warrant this much extended
discussion. He's spent umpteen hours on this project and this
stylistic question is something which clearly falls under
"maintainer's prerogative."


>> Another point I would like to make is that unless I'm mistaken, even
>> if text is accepted into the platform, that doesn't mean that
>> maintainership of the library is assigned to libraries at haskell.org: it
>
> That is true, but I would hope that a change in a package's philosophy
> would be raised for discussion on the list by the maintainer or by the
> person bumping HP library versions before it is encorporated into the
> platform.

Again: there's been more than enough discussion in my opinion, Bryan
has explained his rationale and made his feelings on the matter clear.
Are we going to vote no over this?


>> a quality basis compared to some of the libraries we grandfathered in,
>
> I think that is an argument for improving the other libraries, not for
> opening the platform floodgates.

You could make a similar argument about how you want a pony: the fact
is that the labour pool is not there to improve the other libraries.
Bryan has dropped a shining diamond in our laps and we're quibbling
that the jeweller has given us a Mazarin cut instead of a Peruzzi.
Given how well-written it is, especially relative to our baseline,
characterizing accepting text as-is as "opening the floodgates" isn't
fair. In my opinion. :)

G
-- 
Gregory Collins <greg at gregorycollins.net>