[Jsr308-statements] Comments on JSR 308 statements proposal

[Trevor Harmon]

On Mar 3, 2007, at 5:19 PM, Michael Ernst wrote:

> It's not clear what "to fully support annotations in these tools"  
> means.
> More annotation locations will make annotations more expressive;  
> this lets
> programmers express more, and can make the tools more effective.

I meant that Java 5's annotation mechanism simply doesn't support  
these tools. It's insufficient for their needs.

> But that
> doesn't mean that those tools are useless now, which is what the  
> statement
> seems to suggest.

I was trying to suggest not that the tools are useless but that Java  
5's annotation mechanism is useless to those tools.

Anyway, I'm not sure how to rewrite this; feel free to give it a shot.

> "This field [pc field in bytecode] indicates the address in the  
> bytecode at
> which the statement begins."  Because the classfile needs to indicate
> exactly which bytecodes are annotated, this is not enough.

What else is needed? An extra PC field to mark the end of the statement?

> Overall, I find that a document that makes its points in less space is
> easier to read.  Readers are more likely to get all the way  
> through, and
> are more likely to understand the main points.  For example, you could
> remove the attributions.  It's good to be scholarly and to give credit
> where it is due, but I don't think they add much, except for the  
> editors of
> this document.

I added them mainly for additional information, not attribution. I  
assumed that I may not have summarized the email discussions  
correctly or completely and wanted to give future editors of the  
document an easy way to find the original material. (Maybe that's not  
necessary?)

> Similarly, the "pros and cons"
> statement at the end of the document can be shortened.  In my view,  
> it's
> better to express the arguments rather than give a historical  
> description
> of how the debate proceeded and who said what.

I will rewrite the Community Response section.

For all of your other suggestions, I'm fine with them. AFAIC, feel  
free to edit the wiki if you want.

Also, note that most of the document simply quotes the original email  
discussions. So if it's not clear why a phrase or code example says  
what it says, maybe it would be good to contact the author of the  
original text in question.

Trevor