John Cowan <cowan at ccil dot org> wrote:
That's not the definition of Deprecate:Dictionary definitions of "deprecate" aren't relevant, because it is a term of art among programmers and standardizers. From Wikipedia:In computer software standards and documentation, the term deprecation is applied to software features that are superseded and should be avoided. Although deprecated features remain in the current version, their use may raise warning messages recommending alternate practices, and deprecation may indicate that the feature will be removed in the future. Features are deprecated -- rather than being removed -- in order to provide backward compatibility and give programmers using the feature time to bring their code into compliance with the new standard. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deprecation
Actually, while this disagreement over the use of the word "deprecated" may seem academic, I think it cuts to the very heart of the X-Y versus Y controversy. People on this list -- even the same person at different times; I'll dig up quotes if asked -- have said that (1) deprecated subtags are perfectly fine to use, because they'll just get normalized away, AND that (2) deprecated subtags are something to be avoided at all costs.
We can't have it both ways, and expect those on the opposite side of this battle to accept their preferred forms being "deprecated" on the basis of argument 1 ("it's still OK to use them") when we still have draft text, and arguments on the list, that their use will be considered non-conformant.
As I've said before, we can get so caught up in our own terminology that we forget that the general tagging populace may not understand these terms the way we understand them -- and without a glossary, we can't fault them for devising their own definitions. I agree with John that the use of "deprecated" in the programming world is different from the mainstream dictionary definition, which evokes visions of burning at the stake, but we don't even agree among ourselves exactly what it does mean.
Until we do that, and unless we decide formally that "deprecated" has the gentler meaning of "OK to use, but will be normalized away," the battle lines between the "zh-cmn" crowd and the "cmn" crows will continue to be drawn.
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