[sc34wg3] Problem with wildcards

[Lars Heuer]

Hi Robert,

[...]
>> Since the introduction of wildcards we have this. ?, ?foo and [-"foo"]
>> generate automatically a predictable item identifier otherwise we
>> cannot ensure that the topic has an identity.

> Well, we have/had _different_ ways of creating them. And that is/was good.

IIRC one draft contained automatically, randomly generated item
identifiers, but these cause problems if we want to test an
implementation; since one implementation may use a counter, the other
UUIDs and the next GUUIDs. The predictable item identifiers solves
this problem. If we drop predictable item identifiers and let the
implementations decide how they create them we cannot automatically
test them. Further, the naive approach to use a counter may cause
problems (unpredictable merging situations). If we keep the
predictable item identifiers, we control the problem.

> What I am worried is that now we have _different_ ways of using
> them. I (as implementor) have to memorize this somewhere and I (as CTM
> author) have to be aware of that.

Do you have another solution?

Best regards,
Lars
-- 
Semagia 
<http://www.semagia.com>