std.xml should just go

[Daniel Gibson]

Am 03.02.2011 22:26, schrieb Steven Schveighoffer:
> On Thu, 03 Feb 2011 16:03:55 -0500, Daniel Gibson <metalcaedes at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Am 03.02.2011 21:48, schrieb Tomek Sowiński:
>>> Jonathan M Davis napisał:
>>>
>>>> I think that at least a couple of people have said that they have the
>>>> beginnings
>>>> of a replacement, but I don't believe that anyone has stepped up to say that
>>>> they'll actually complete and propose a module for inclusion in Phobos.
>>>
>>> Wimps ;-)
>>>
>>>> So, std.xml is still very much up in the air, and Tango has set a very high bar
>>>> with regards to speed. And while we may not be able to match Tango for speed -
>>>> especially at first - we'd definitely like to have an xml solution that's
>>>> close.
>>>> And that's not necessarily going to be easy - especially since we're inevitably
>>>> going to want a range-based solution. And while ranges can be quite
>>>> efficient, it
>>>> can also be easy to make them inefficient if you're not careful.
>>>
>>> Speaking of Tango, may I look at it? I remember that beef over the first
>>> datetime and it gives me shivers...
>>>
>>
>> You probably shouldn't look at the source.
>> I dunno about the interface (documentation) - it's certainly not illegal to take
>> inspiration from it, but maybe then people will again claim that source was
>> stolen.. but when you claim that you haven't looked at the source it may be ok..
> 
> It has been posited by Tango's developers that simply looking at the
> documentation of a D library isn't enough to understand the library, you
> probably have looked at the source.  Until they change that opinion, I would
> avoid even the documentation.
> 
> http://lists.puremagic.com/pipermail/phobos/2010-April/000370.html
> 
> The pertinent quote from there:
> 
> "In my opinion, claiming a clean room implementation of an API in D is
> difficult, if for no other reason that it is (due to imperfect doc generation
> etc) somewhat difficult to properly study a D API without at the same time
> reading the source (or glimpsing at it)."
> 

They can claim whatever they want.. if Tomek says he only looked at the
documentation (for an idea how a good interface for a XML lib may look like)
they can hardly prove anything.
Furthermore this ("I haven't seen the source") is an argument that Walter will
(probably) accept when deciding whether to include the module in Phobos, because
he used it himself in the past IIRC.

>> Maybe a clean-room approach is possible: Somebody else looks at the source and
>> documents what it does and how it does that (without copying anything) and you
>> could use that documentation for your own code.
>> If you don't want to clone it but have questions about how they did something
>> specific you could just ask here and (hopefully) someone looks it up and
>> explains it to you.
> 
> Make sure if you follow this approach that you document exactly the process and
> how it was done.

Yes, it'd be best to do this publicly, e.g. in this newsgroup (or maybe the
phobos mailing list). So it's obvious who has seen the source and has written
the documentation that was used by someone else to write the code that may look
similar to the Tango code.

> 
> -Steve

Cheers,
- Daniel