Re: [Bitcoin-development] Version bits proposal

[Douglas Roark <doug@bitcoinarmory.com>]

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On 2015/5/26 21:48, Pieter Wuille wrote:
> here is a proposal for how to coordinate future soft-forking
> consensus changes:
> https://gist.github.com/sipa/bf69659f43e763540550
> 
> It supports multiple parallel changes, as well as changes that get 
> permanently rejected without obstructing the rollout of others.
> 
> Feel free to comment. As the gist does not support notifying 
> participants of new comments, I would suggest using the mailing
> list instead.

Hi Pieter. Thanks for posting the proposal. I think the concept itself
is pretty solid. I know some people have been proposing alternate
methods too. I hope they'll share here, assuming they haven't already.
As is, my comments concern typos and general copy editing.

- - Just speaking in general, I found the BIP to be a bit hard to read.
AFAIK, the basic facts are accurate. I just found myself having to
re-read certain passages two or three times. A little polish wouldn't
hurt. For example, using the "it" pronoun can be confusing, such as
multiple uses in the abstract. Specifying what "it" is (e.g., "The
proposed change relies on...") would really help. In addition, the way
the "W" value is handled seems like it could be improved a bit. I know
the wording is accurate. Seeing 1000 change to 1001 is still a little
weird.
- - In "Multi-stage soft forks," I presume the second sentence should
end as follows: "[...] with additional validation rules that get
enabled one by _one_." Depending on semantics, I'd consider changing
"one by one" to "incremental steps," but that's your call.
- - I found the "High bits" section to be confusing at first. It looks
like you chose to show everything as little endian data, matching
what's actually in the block. My personal preference would be to
represent the data, for readability purposes, as big endian. I doubt
I'm the only one who finds big endian to be much easier to process
mentally.
- - Some sort of legend showing A, I, W, etc. would really help, as
opposed to just running into them as one goes along. Otherwise, the
alphabet soup can be a bit confusing.

Thanks again.

- -- 
- ---
Douglas Roark
Senior Developer
Armory Technologies, Inc.
doug@bitcoinarmory.com
PGP key ID: 92ADC0D7
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