Meta Debate

Charles Goodwin <[email protected]> writes:
> For clarity for developers and people looking for widgets.  It's not solving
> a technical issue, but an organisational one.

Thanks for pointing this out; I think we're finally getting to the
meat of the issue here (thank goodness!).

Perhaps rather than debating the naming structure, we should debate
the *rationale behind it*, and come up with a rationale which makes
the choice of structure obvious.  I think this will be easier to
discuss objectively.

I'm going to propose another general rule here (in addition to
no-plurals and no-capitals).  I propose that we derive our structure
by starting with a single namespace (xwt.widget) and subdivide it only
when:

 1. We need to avoid naming collisions (xwt.widget.separator !=
    xwt.widget.menu.separator).

 2. We need to have some templates overlaid by a theme and some
    templates not overlaid by a theme (xwt.theme != xwt.lib)

 3. We want to force some template application upon theme developers
    (like mandating that button applies clickable) either because
    they're likely to forget it or because not applying it would
    confuse theme users.  (xwt.widget != xwt.theme)

 4. When there is a huge, self-contained, theme-independent widget
    conglomeration that is almost an application in itself (xwt.html).

I'm deliberately not including "organizational" in here because that's
sort of a personal decision... if that's part of our criteria, we'll
never be able to come to an agreement.

Can any of you think of any other rules for when we should divide the
namespace?  If so, please provide an example with your rule.

Do you think any of these rules are unnecessary?  I think that (2) is
pretty important.  I'm fairly set on (1), but I can see how others
might disagree.  (3) is an interesting one... I favor it, but it's not
really a religious issue for me.

  - a

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