[sldev] [PROTOCOL] Protocol Documentation

[Tateru Nino]

Okay, once more, with feeling :)

John Hurliman wrote:
> LL: the source code is very clear on how all of this works
No. Actually, it's exactly *not* that.

The source code shows exactly what the viewer *does*. No more, and no less.
It doesn't tell you what features/capabilities are available for use
from the services side that the viewer may not presently use.
It doesn't tell you what is intended or correct.
It only tells you what subset the viewer implements *today* - some of
which may well work by happy accident, rather than by design (remember
we've had some bugfixes that were just that - where the data and the
viewer were talking completely different formats but it worked by
accident despite this).

In the future, we assume that more functionality will be available from
the web-services than any given viewer implementation will actually be
using at any given time. This may already be the case (and quite likely
is). There's no way for an implementer to find out, except to see the
very narrow use-cases currently implemented in the official viewer source.

-- 
Tateru Nino
http://dwellonit.blogspot.com/