I ended up getting into an unpleasant exchange with the library author, who repeatedly challenged me to suggest concrete changes to the design to fix the perceived problems. I had examined the library more thoroughly, my guess is that I would have been able to suggest improvements. I don't blame the library author in this case; it's only natural to ask for an alternate design when you are told that your design is flawed;
Maybe, but you shouldn't feel guilty. The onus is on the proposer to come up with a good design.
The question is: How far does a library author need to go in providing evidence that the design is "good" (which often means different things to different people, but lets ignore that for the moment)? Does a proposer need to "prove" that the library design is the best currently imaginable? While this might be possible for some libraries I don't think it is generally feasible. More specifically, if a raised point is so vague that the library author is at a complete loss exactly how an improvement could be implemented I think it is only fair to turn the roles around and require the reviewer to at least outline how the improvement is implementable within the given requirements. Regards, -- Andreas Huber When replying by private email, please remove the words spam and trap from the address shown in the header.