Re: Hirerachical error codes: English Language: A proposal

[Bruce_Kahn@xxxxxxxx]

Andre made a nice proposal of sorts while John and others went down a BIG
rat hole.  I think this has been a great waste of group bandwidth as some
folks just dont seem to read all emails (or they just ignore postings from
me :^b).  In order to get us back on track (and out of this rat hole) Ill
repost part of my reply on this thread from 3/18:

[Snippet]
I dont want us to reinvent the preverbial wheel here so Ill refer you
all to the iCalendar RFC:

4.8.8.2 Request Status
...
The short return status is a PERIOD character (US-ASCII decimal 46)
separated 3-tuple of integers. For example, "3.1.1". The successive levels
of integers provide for a successive level of status code granularity.

The following are initial classes for the return status code. Individual
iCalendar object methods will define specific return status codes for these
classes. In addition, other classes for the return status code may be
defined using the registration process defined later in this memo.
[/Snippet]

So, to make it plain US-ASCII for some folks: We _already_ have what John
was originally asking for _and_ there is a clear description of what a CUA
should do when it finds something like 3.2.1.2.3.6.3.2.2.1.2 and it only
understands codes down to 3.2.1.2.3.6; it can treat them as near
equivalents and behave acordingly.  Thats the entire purpose of the
hierarchical coding scheme and using classes of error codes and why we took
that decision in iCalendar!!!

Enough said on this topic; we have lots more important stuff than just
rehashing violent agreements and reinventing the iCalendar RFC content!!

Bruce