Re: experimental proposal

On Wed, Nov 12, 2003 at 09:07:37PM +0100, Juliusz Chroboczek wrote:
> DD> My plan is to do some experiments to see if a so-far unused mechanism
> DD> that the X11 protocol creators provided would provide a better way of
> DD> achieving than adding on a bunch of ad-hoc extensions or creating
> DD> unnecessary incompatibilities.  The mechanism I'm referring to is the
> DD> protocol minor version number.
> 
> David,
> 
> Unless I'm missing something, it's a horrible idea.
> 
> Using the version number does have a significant drawback: extensions
> live in a rich name space, while protocol versions live in a linear
> numeric one.  While nothing prevents XFree86 from having its
> extensions and, say, Sun theirs (and of course XFree86 implementing
> the more reasonable among Sun's extensions), bumping the minor
> protocol version requires global consensus.
> 
> If such consensus fails to happen, there is no solution other than
> checking the server vendor string.  Icky.
> 
> The obvious reason why somebody would want to bump the minor version
> is marketing (we're a more recent version than you), but that's
> obviously not a reason that we (XFree86) will ever consider.

Consider the OpenGL model, where loads of extension exists, and from
time to time the ARB does pull in some of the extensions to become a
standard part of the OpenGL spec, and bump the OpenGL minor version.

The same could happen here : Experimentation with extension, then when
they are mature and well accepted, or whatever, they get pulled in into
the core protocol. This would need a standardization body though, but
David doesn't seem keen on letting this be the X.Org people.

Friendly,

Sven Luther