Input shaping

[Egbert Eich]

Roland Mainz writes:
 > Egbert Eich wrote:
 > >  > BTW: Who wrote the SHAPE extension originally ? IMO the original authors
 > >  > should have a look and comment whether they like/dislike the idea,
 > >  > too...
 > > 
 > > I'm not sure if this is relevant,
 > 
 > I think in general (in the this case it doesn't matter as the "old" and
 > "new" authors seem to be identical) it's relevant to get the original
 > authors to look at changes to their work to avoid any problems/complains
 > or screwing-up a design...

If a piece of code is such that only the original author fully understands
its design it strongly indicates that such a thing is totally overdesigned.
We have a lot of this in X. Luckily the SHAPE extension doesn't seem to
belong here.
Generally software should be maintainable independently of the people involved
- this requires that the ability to understand the design is based on the code
and its documentation.
If we have to go back to the original author to ask him 'what did you mean 
by this feature' such a feature may not do any good at all.

Egbert.