plans for 0.0.6 release

[Nicholas Nethercote]

On Fri, 3 Jun 2005, Rusty Russell wrote:

> We went down the ":" path in netfilter for port ranges, and I've
> regretted it ever since.  It is the most common mistake I make in
> writing rules.

Sure, I was happy to dismiss ':'.

> Remember that while early adopters of bzr will be hardcode Unix types, 
> the majority of users on a reasonable timescale will not be.

I'm not convinced that this is true.  Bu let's assume it is:  what does it 
imply?

> "-" is the grammatical, historical and most intuitive choice.

Why is it the grammatical choice?  I don't understand what you mean by 
that.  How is it more grammatical than ".." or ':'?

Why is it the historical choice?  Has it been used this way in previous 
programs?  And if, as you say, the majority of bzr users on a reasonable 
timescale won't be hardcore Unix types, why does the historical choice 
matter?

(I'm not claiming history is unimportant, I'm just trying to understand 
the relation between your "historical" argument and your "early 
adopters/majority of users" argument).

As for intuition, that varies from person to person.  To me, "4..5" is 
unambigously a range.  "4-5" could be a range, or "4 minus 5";  when it's 
part of "-r4-5" I can't tell what it is, although I want to read it as 
"-r4 -5".

> There is no parsing ambiguity when combined with the "<namespace>:"
> syntax, which I think everyone quite likes.

There need not be a parsing ambiguity for machines, ie. the grammar need 
not be ambiguous.  However, while 'tar' on my system parses "-c-f" as two 
options (ie. "-c -f"), various other programs I tried (gcc, gzip, ps) gave 
an error for such syntax.  So there isn't even consistency among existing 
programs on whether to parse "-r4-5" as a single option or as two.

And humans (eg. me) can still find it confusing.

>> - This leaves '..' which seems best:  it's intuitive, easy to read, easy
>>    to implement and doesn't have any prior meaning, AFAIK.  And I don't
>>    recall anyone else complaining about it.
>
> Unfortunately, this is neither intuitive nor established.

I find it intuitive.  You might not.  As I said, intuition varies from 
person to person.  You're right that ".." is not established, but does 
that matter?  (See your "early adopters/majority of users" argument 
above).  Is '-' any more established?

I guess the final choice will basically come down to what Martin wants. 
Martin, I hope you've got something out of this discussion! :)

Nick