[Zope-CMF] Re: [dev] Dublin Core Creator(s): a small proposal

[Yuppie]

Hi!


Tres Seaver wrote:
> On Mon, 2003-12-15 at 16:42, Yuppie wrote:
>>Listing more than one creator in a Creator element violates the 
>>standard. You are right that 'Creators' isn't a Dublin Core element, but 
>>the proposed method represents an ordered list of 'Creator' elements.
> 
> 
> Strictly speaking, *any* DC element is repeatable.

Yes. But the CMF DublinCore interface doesn't define all elements as 
repeatable.

> Let's stick with the
> pattern used by the "*Date" elements:  reserve the "initial caps" name
> for the string version, and use a more natural method name for the one
> which delivers a more natural representation.  E.g., call the new method
> 'creators';  have the 'Creator' method return the
> equivalent of '"; ".join( self.creators() )'.

created() is the DateTime representation of CreationDate(). And 
CreationDate() is a Dublin Core Date element.

You propose defining creators() as the list representation of Creator(). 
Creator() would be a string representation of a sequence of Dublin Core 
Creator elements. That doesn't convince me.

If we reserve the "initial caps" names for string versions
- Subject() and Contributors() violate this rule
- this is no reason for using Creator() instead of Creators()

It might make sense to reserve "initial caps" names for DC elements.
In this case only Contributors() violates the rule. Sequences of 
elements could be called listContributors() and listCreators().


Regarding backwards compatibility your proposal might be useful in cases 
where the semicolon separated string can replace the old string. But it 
breaks e.g. code where the Creator id is converted to a full name.

If we use a new method name for the sequence (represented as string or 
tuple), people have time to update their code.



Would you like this more than my original proposal:

listCreators() returns a sequence of Dublin Core Creator elements.
Creators() returns a string "; ".join( self.listCreators() )
Creator() returns the old value and is deprecated

The problem is that Contributors() works different. We could add an 
alias listContributors(), but if Contributors() returns a string instead 
of a tuple that breaks backwards compatibility.


There might be other solutions, but I'd really like to have consistent 
patterns without changing all existing method names.

Cheers,
	Yuppie