On Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 12:10 AM, Luke Plant <l.plant...@cantab.net> wrote: > Hi all, > > The Django deprecation timeline [1] is very inconsistent in its usage of > the terminology 'deprecated'. For example, the 1.5 section often says > "is deprecated" or "has been deprecated", when what they mean is "will > be removed", which is what the other sections generally tend to say. > Some in section 1.6 say a feature "will be deprecated". > > Can we have a consistent policy on this terminology? > > Miriam-Webster: > > "deprecate: to express disapproval of" > > So something is 'deprecated' as soon as we say we are going to remove it > - we are expressing disapproval, but allowing it to continue > temporarily. The confusing thing from Python terminology is that we then > add PendingDeprecationWarning, followed by DeprecationWarning, which > suggest that deprecation is something that will happen in the *future*, > the thing that happens when we finally remove it. But that isn't normal > English usage, and we can't sensibly use 'deprecated' for both the > beginning and the end of the process. > > So I'd suggest that we stick to: > > - deprecated = the first time we say we are going to remove it, > and normally means we add PendingDeprecationWarning > > - removed - when we actually remove. > > In the deprecation timeline, we can simply say "X will be removed", or > "X will be removed in favour of Y". If it is outside the normal > deprecation policy in some way, we can mention that, otherwise no need > to say which version it was deprecated in. In our release notes, we > carry on announcing deprecation as we are doing now. The only problem is > that our 'deprecation timeline' effectively becomes a 'removal > timeline', but I think it will be clear enough if the rest of our > terminology is.
+1. I agree with Paul that "PendingDeprecationWarning" is slightly problematic from a language perspective because we're saying that we're deprecating a feature now, and implementing that by raising a Pending warning. However, I think that's a mild inconsistency I can live with. Yours, Russ Magee %-) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django developers" group. To post to this group, send email to django-developers@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to django-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers?hl=en.
