Re: [stellation-res] Revised version of Jonathan Gossage's workspace aud

[Dave Shields <shields@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Sep 04, 2002 at 09:37:19AM -0400, Dave Shields wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 03, 2002 at 07:53:24PM -0400, Jonathan Gossage wrote:

> > > >> 36. The method "normalizeText" neds the Javadoc entry revised to
> > > >> reflect new implementation.
> > > >>
> > > >> I have serious doubts about the usefulness of this operation. It is
> > > >> costly and given that all internal operations are done on text
> > > >> artifacts where line termination characters have been removed during
> > > >> the construction process I don't see the benefit.
> > > >>
> > > >
> > > >It is costly, but it is needed. For example, I have encountered
> > > >unnormalized files in the Linux kernel, and several times after Jim
> > > >Wright has checked in code he created under Eclipse and forgot to put
> > > >in "normal" form.
> > 
> > I think I must have a conceptual problem here. Could you explain why
> > un-normalized files represent a problem. I am probably missing an important
> > point.
> > 
> 
> This is discussed in the guide (search for 'normal'). I'll post a separate
> note on this shortly, as it's probably something we should also put in the
> FAQ as well.
> 

I just tried to construct a small example showing why normalization was required,
and found it wasn't so easy. Turns out the recently revised signature computation
for Text artifacts computes the signature as if the file were in normal form, even
it it isn't, so I have commented out the code to TextArtifact.normalize() in 
Project.computeSignature().

dave
-- 
Dave Shields, IBM Research, shields@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.