CSEP: 1
Title: CSEP Guidelines
Version: $Revision: 21818 $
Last-changed: $Date: 2005-07-21 15:51:19 -0500 (jue, 21 jul 2005) $
Author: Marten Svanfeldt
Status: Draft
Type: Informational
Content-Type: text/x-rst
Created: 2005-07-17

What is a CSEP?
===============

CSEP stands for Crystal Space 3D Enhancement Proposal and is a concept derived from Python project [1]_ and is intended to be a way of collecting, evaluating and documenting design and implementational enhancement proposals within the Crystal Space 3D project (shortened to CS) [2]_

The CSEPs are under revision control and version and last-modified-date should match the revision control information.

Kinds of CSEPs
==============

There are two main types of CSEPs. The first type is the informational CSEPs and contain general information about CSEPs themselves or parts of Crystal Space.

The other type is the proposal CSEPs. These are written when someone have a proposal for a central change in CS and want to get some consensus within the CS community that the change is indeed a good one.


What should a proposal CSEP contain
===================================

Each CSEP proposing a design change should contain but is not limited to the following parts (guidelines):

1. Preamble -- RFC 822 style header with meta-information, a short title and name of the author(s).

2. Abstract -- a short description of the issue being addressed.

3. Motivation -- should clearly explain why this change is needed.

4. Technical specification -- a technical description of how the issue is solved. It should be detailed enough to allow anyone to implement it.

5. Rationale -- the rationale should provide a background for the proposed technical specification with motivation of choosen algorithms, alternatives evaluated etc

6. Compatibility -- how the change relate to current code and users. This is one of the most important sections. Any change which results in a syntax or semantic incompatibility should be well motivated and ways to provide backward compatibility should be considered.'

7. Performance -- any performance implications by the design change should be examined and explained.

8. Implementation -- the implementation is needed before a CSEP can be finalized but not crucial for it's acceptance.

9. Copyright -- all CSEPs must be placed in the public domain or have their copyright transfered to the Crystal Space 3D project.

CSEP Header
===========
Each CSEP must begin with a RFC 822 style header preamble. Headers marked '*' are optional::

    CSEP: <number>
    Title: <csep title, max 40 characters>
    Version: $Revision: 21818 $
    Last-changed: $Date: 2005-07-21 15:51:19 -0500 (jue, 21 jul 2005) $
    Author: <list of authors name and optionally email>
   *Discussions-To: <email address of list with discussions>
    Type: <Informational | Proposal>
   *Content-Type: <text/plain | text/x-rst>
   *Requires: <csep numbers>
    Created: <date created on, in yyyy-mm-dd format>
   *Replaces: <csep number>
   *Replaced-By: <csep number>


References and Footnotes
========================

.. [1] Python PEP Archive at http://www.python.org/peps/

.. [2] Crystal Space 3D at http://www.crystalspace3d.org/

   

Copyright
=========
This document has been placed in the public domain.