[tei-council] respond by 1 May: summary of and path forward for "no longer recommended" and "deprecated" practices

[Kevin Hawkins]

Thanks for the quick responses, Gabby and Sebastian.  More below ...

On 4/19/2013 6:47 AM, Gabriel Bodard wrote:
> On 2013-04-19 09:42, Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
>
>> a) "The value of @validUntil shall be no sooner than two years from
>> the date of the change." - did we agree on "no sooner than two
>> years"? I thought it was one year from the date of the release in
>> which the status changes. we did see-saw around that area
>
> My recollection matches Kevin's; the rationale for this was that two
> years from committing the deprecation note *guarantees* at least one
> year from the release in which the deprecation is recorded to the
> release in which the element disappears. I've glossed the wiki page
> accordingly.

Indeed.  While what Sebastian said was suggested, the problem is that we 
don't know at a given time when exactly the next release will take place.

>>    b) we can automate the check in 3. of the wiki page. i.e. don't ask people to go grepping, but instead add to the build checks so that a validUntil which is less than 6 months away from todays date generates a warning and a validUntil which is after todays date generates an error. This will cause Jenkins to fail the build if we ignore a validUntil date.
>>     c) for 1 B, i would suggest a formal process whereby the release notes have a section listing all the Specs waiting on death row, with their date. so we write a script
>> to generate a section for inclusion in the notes. anything which cane be automated, lets automate...
>
> Agreed. Neither of these means that no human has to look at the
> deprecation and take an action (meaning that decisions can and will be
> reviewed), but they also help to make sure we don't lose sight of things
> we've planned to do or people we should have warned.

Sebastian's idea is a good one.  I've noted in the wiki.

>> I will wait to do the stylesheet changes until you have done the first @validUntil, so we have something to test on. it won't be hard,
>> so shout when you're ready and we can get the implementation done quickly
>
> It would be nice if a couple of people other than Kevin tried this out
> too (maybe once Kevin and Sebastian have proved it doesn't explode).
> I'll keep an eye on my tickets for anything that could make use of
> @validUntil. (I'm not totally clear on how deprecation of a model--as
> opposed to a whole element of attribute--would work. Is everyone else?)

Good, we'll plan to test the @validUntil code before going through all 
of the recent deprecation actions.

In general, yes, we should all be using this mechanism going forward. 
This means that in resolving tickets, we now can all be clearer in our 
use of the terms "no longer recommended" and "deprecated" -- because 
they now have technical definitions.

K.