Re: Several classes for the same purpose?

["Anders Johannsen" <anders@ignition.dk>] > I remember the matter being discussed some time ago, but I am not that > consencus was ever established: > > Should several classes serving the same purpose be allowed, or is PEAR > aiming at providing The One True Solution? When Pooh was asked if he wanted milk or honey, he said "yes, please". :-) I don't have an absolute answer for this. For reusability, having only one interface is best. On the other hand, if we let more classes serving the same purpose co-exist, better ideas will surface and mature faster. For functionality that most packages want to re-use, it is worse to have many implementations, because it limits what packages the user can combine freely. These we want to standarize harder. But for more specialized packages it doesn't really matter if there are several implementations, if no other packages use their API. Pooh solves his problem by having milk _with_ the honey, we can decide freely what's best for each class/package/type of functionality. - Stig -- Stig Sæther Bakken <ssb@fast.no> Fast Search & Transfer ASA, Trondheim, Norway