Joao Abecasis wrote:
Caveat: 2, BTW, is not backwards compatible. I shall deal with this
later (as soon as I get some more free time to do Qbk coding) through
a version switch. For current Qbk files, this:
[license
Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0.
(See accompanying file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at
<ulink url="http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt";>
http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt
</ulink>)
]
will not work as expected. For example, '<' will be rendered as "<".
I can see the importance of backward compatibility for users that have
invested in quickbook. However, *total compatibility* should not be our
first priority, right now. Keeping the syntax clean is.
I wonder if it's worth the effort to start offering version switches at
this point. Somehow it seems too early.
Total compatibility is not my first priority. That's for sure.
However, the effort is worth a penny to implement(*), and,
answering your question, yes, it is definitely worth the effort.
I always say, it's always good to start early. As soon as Eric
implemented Qbk versioning as part of the doc-info syntax,
quickbook is already prepared for 100% backward compatibility.
When do we start? I'd say: now :-)
We are at version 1.2. All new features that break compatibility
with 1.2 will only be applicable to 1.3. The thing is, the problem
is that, in most cases, the incompatibility goes undetected. Take
the example above. Compiling a version 1.2 file with quickbook 1.3
that is not backward compatible will not fail. Yet, somewhere in
your xml/html result, you will have the wrong results that is
hard to find. It is not like, say, C++ where the compiler will
simply complain. This is precisely why I wanted to have a testing
facility for quickbook; to find out where and how a certain
feature breaks compatibility.
Regards,
--
Joel de Guzman
http://www.boost-consulting.com
http://spirit.sf.net
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