Platonides <platoni...@gmail.com> wrote: > [...] > I think it really makes sense to define the names of a set of available > functions. That would really make much simpler the development of > portable tools, or working on different languages, without having to > relearn the framework used. > That said, each of us would probably push for their own API to be > standarised.
I think you found the problem :-). Should "normalizeLink" be a method of "WikiFarm", "Wiki" or "WikiPage"? Should a page title be a string or a "WikiTitle"? If the latter and in a true OOP language, should it be a derived class of "string" or "WikiString" which would be then derived from "string"? And so on, and so forth. > I don't think providing tests is the panacea for making people implement > them. They are obviously nice, but as it would be open source, each user > doesn't need to reimplement them according to the specification. The > same code could be shared. > The problem is in adoption of the API, and agreeing on an "standarised" one. Having recently ported a parser skeleton from Java to PHP, I disagree wholeheartedly :-). There are many subtle differ- ences between languages which programmers usually aren't even aware of because they take them for granted. Take re- gular expressions and their various flavours for example. Test cases ensure reproducable results and give the develop- ers the confidence that their enhancement/optimization will not burn down the house. So I'm looking forward to Madman publishing his framework. Tim _______________________________________________ Toolserver-l mailing list (Toolserver-l@lists.wikimedia.org) https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/toolserver-l Posting guidelines for this list: https://wiki.toolserver.org/view/Mailing_list_etiquette