Date: Tue, 08 Apr 2003 10:27:45 -0700 (PDT)
From: ned(_dot_)freed(_at_)mrochek(_dot_)com
Agreed, but IMO the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages. Like
it or not, there is a large class of operations sieve currently
cannot do and which people really really really want to be able to
do. I have to tell customers "no, you cannot do that at present
with sieve" at least a couple of times every month, and that they
have to use procmail or something similar instead. This really
isn't an acceptable state of affairs IMO.
Whatever the benefits may be, they don't let us adapt a random-ass
approach to language design.
Nor was I suggesting any such thing be done.
Formal operational semantics and careful thought on how to make
various features orthogonal would go a long way so we don't have every
specification referencing every other specification and subtly
altering their meanings.
As is always the case in the IETF, willingness to do the work counts for a lot.
I have no problem with someone doing a formal analysis here; in fact I would
welcome it. What I object to is making such analysis a requirement to
proceed.
As for careful thought, well, isn't that why we're discussing the various
details of this extension on the list right now?
Ned