Troels Henriksen writes:
- Add signed-and-dated comments to difficult passages whenever reasonable.
I'm not sure I like this. I much prefer relying on the version control system to provide me with this kind of information.
Although I agree that the information about who wrote a comment and when is indeed available through the version control system, it is not necessarily very convenient to get to. Either way, my remark was more about the comment itself than about the signature and date.
- Add references to the spec for code that implements some required functionality.
Isn't this reference just the name of the function in question?
No, because unless you know all functions in the spec by heart, you cannot know whether some code is intended to implement such a function, or whether it is a function specific to the way it was implemented. The reference to the spec could take the form of a section number. There is something like that in regions.lisp.
It is hard to tell what is missing because some parts of the spec are optional, such as color blending for instance.
I don't think it is necessary for us to implement all optional parts before a stable release.
I agree, but we must decide what optional parts should be included.
But it might not be highest priority to implement all of the spec. I would say it is more urgent to make the parts that are currently implemented work according to the spec. I am thinking of things like output-record inheriting from standard-rectangle and then assuming all output records do so.
I think it's very important to have a full implementation of the non-optional parts of the spec in a stable release, otherwise it has no meaning.
Of course, but I think the easiest way to get there is to make sure the parts we have work first of all.