[r-t] Method extension

[Philip Earis]

PABS:
"A block of changes can be uniquely defined by its stage, length and a set of places, where a place can be described by an ordered pair (c,p), where c is the number of the change relative to the start of the block, and p the number of the place made..."

I'm deeply sceptical of any attempt to codify extension, as I think you'll always end up doomed to failure with some or all of: contradictions, arbitrary preferences hardwired, endless patching, historical tangles, and antagonising proscriptions that will perpetuate the current tensions. My inclination is to scrap all Decisions regarding extension, and simply leave it to bands to decide what constitutes an extension for any method, with the role of the CC being (at most) to consider stepping in where a band's naming appears willfully perverse.

However, I think PABS' approach should be engaged with. My first challenge though is penetrating the quintessentially PABS language :-)  I may be missing some of the practical implications, but when PABS says eg the block length extends arithmetically but can be constant, how does this work in practice if either approach may be possible (eg with little plain minor methods)? To what extent does it depend on precedent with respect to previously-named methods? In principle could eg a "non-little" method (eg Oxford TB minor) extend to a little major / royal etc method (eg Barry Peachey's Dog)? And how does one prove an extension is (or isn't) infinite? Count to three?

In any case, please can he (or indeed anyone) give a few idiot-proof worked examples of how his system would work in practice? I'd particularly like to see examples with these methods:

- An oft-rung treble-dodging minor method...lets say London Surprise Minor

- A vanilla TD major method...Superlative, say

- A simple plain method - something like St Clement's Minor (or indeed St Simon's doubles)

- Inarguably intuitive extensions at any stage, which the current CC rules nevertheless massively fail with...let's say the method where the treble simply plain hunts to (n-1)th place, and similarly Ashford.