Re: PHP Specification

On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 10:37 AM, Johannes Schlüter <johannes@schlueters.de> wrote: > On Mon, 2014-03-24 at 10:15 +0100, Ivan Enderlin @ Hoa wrote: >> * the historical interpreter [1], > > How is that historic? It is the prime standard with most active > contributors etc. > > >> Finally, I think that internal@ is responsible to start such a >> standardization process because this group has made the historical >> interpreter. > > It is building the reference implementation. If other implementations > add new features they can and they can propose it for inclusion in the > reference implementation by which it becomes part of the language > definition. While old parts of the implementation are only documented in > code and reference documentation form the RFC process provides more > architectural of new features. Agreed on the contributions process, however: Ivan is talking about specifications, an implementation follows a given specification, not the other way 'round. A well written specification greatly simplify documentations, implementation(s) and testing, to name only a few advantages. That being said, I find very disturbing the total lack of interest from historical (from a time pov, not activity) core developers in the next major version. Most drastic changes around PHP happen outside PHP, many features our users are looking for are implemented outside the core while we keep arguing about the needs of these features. This is not a good thing. Cheers, -- Pierre @pierrejoye | http://www.libgd.org