[spambayes-dev] "X-" as a prefix for experimental options

[Skip Montanaro]

I think the easiest way for people to play with new options is if they are
in CVS instead of having to apply patches.  Posting context diffs doesn't
seem to be yielding a stampede of testers for several (trivial, perhaps)
recent ideas.  As an alternative, I propose that experimental options be
simply incorporated into CVS with an "X-" prefix on the option name (e.g.,
["Tokenizer", "X-gateway_machines"]) and that they always be off by default.
This allows a couple things to happen:

    * They would be more easily available to early adopters who might not
      have the usual facility we've come to expect with cvs and patch(1).
      As the Outlook plugin-using population continues to grow, the relative
      number of cvs-and-patch aficianados will dwindle.

    * They could documented as experimental and included in a SpamBayes
      release.

    * User interfaces like sb_server.py or the Outlook plugin could
      recognize such options and display them in a distinctive manner which
      makes it clear they are experimental, and possibly even solicit
      feedback on them (particularly if such applications could report some
      relevant statistics where warranted).

    * Elevating such options to non-experimental status only requires
      removing the "X-" prefix from that option's use in distributed code.
      Instances of the "X-" prefixed names which remain in options files
      might elicit a warning, but still serve to set the now
      non-experimental option value.

    * The options parser could warn (but not fatally) about option file
      settings that have "X-" prefixes which don't correspond to actual
      options.  This way, the code which implements them could be ripped out
      if they are deemed not useful without fear that programs which use
      them will begin to fail, possibly silently in the case of
      non-interactive use.

Skip