Re: 1.5.6: (bound? ) missing from optargs.scm

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

   From: Marius Vollmer <address@hidden>
   Date: 01 Apr 2002 00:06:35 +0200

   It was not clobbered, please look more closely at what I did.  You
   keep your '-o' option, and the rest of us gets to have command line
   compatibility with the snarfer from 1.4.  This compatibility comes at
   very little cost, if you want to call it a cost at all: the user is
   not forced to switched to a better usage of guile-snarf, he is merely
   allowed to.

what was clobbered was encapsulation of mechanism (internals) which
would allow us flexibility in the long run.  the general principle i
feel appropriate here is that: when starting, start w/ exposing as
little as possible; future changes are then relegated to "addition"
which is easier to satisfy normal compatibility constraints, than
"removal" or "renaming".

i felt that this principle was applicable (we are at starting point)
because "snarfer from 1.4" was not supported; adding retroactive support
is ok if the design was good, but it wasn't, so this was not really
justifiable.

the cost (aside from listening to me spew on like this) in a decision to
expose internals is always latent, which is understandably difficult to
perceive.  however, i'm sure you know the value of encapsulation because
of the `bound?' situation and am very glad to not think about that any
more and to watch you DTRT (i do this by watching tasks/TODO -- if you
claim some task i won't touch it).

   Yeah, I was not being very polite by snatching the hacking of
   guile-snarf away from you.  Your first reply did not sound like you
   wanted to continue, tho.

i had invested time to weigh the factors (as i learned them), explain my
reasoning, and do the work.  why would i want to continue when the job
was done?  more importantly, on the plate is doc snarfing -- are we
going to see the same behavioral patterns repeated?  more generally, i'm
about to open the doors to give more people write privs -- can you set a
good example for these people?

thi