>From the doc, here's the point that we've been discussing: > Readers need a simple mechanism to know whether they support all features they may encounter when reading a specific file.
This is a follow-up to decide between options: - Set footer version to 3 (for example) - Set footer version to 3+ when preview features are present - Set footer version to 3/3+ and record preview feature names - Use magic bytes for version - PAR3 >From this, it appears to me that most of us (at least those of us discussing it) have been working under the assumption that our vote meant using the version by writing it into files. Personally, I think this is also a natural conclusion. A reader needs to know what version a file was written with in order to decide whether it has guarantees (which is another way to say what's in the versioning doc). I don't think that this is a dishonest or bad faith argument. My suggestion to ask the community is really to clarify what we all think we voted on. If there was genuine confusion about this then let's talk through it. But, again, I don't think that this was unclear to most people. Do you agree that it's reasonable to ask what people thought they were agreeing to? Ryan On Fri, Sep 4, 2026 at 12:26 PM Antoine Pitrou <[email protected]> wrote: > > Le 04/09/2026 à 20:35, Ryan Blue a écrit : > > It sounds like you're suggesting that we don't version data files. I > don't > > think that makes sense with versioning and I'm pretty sure most people > that > > voted to use versions would agree with me. > > The *only* implication of the vote was to move forward with the usage of > community-agreed versions (rather than, say, mechanistic calendar-based > presets) to signal levels of compatibility between readers and writers. > > If you wanted the vote to mean something more, then you should have had > the vote explicitly mention it. Anything else is dishonest. > > > Should I start a thread dedicated to asking the > > community whether most people thought that "using versions" would mean > > writing the version used for a file in the file metadata? > > No, you should wait for this discussion to happen in the hope of > reaching a consensus. > > Personally, I don't think readers should up front refuse reading a file > that has a version number higher than their official compatibility > level. Other people (Micah, Will, at least) see to be of the same opinion. > > Regards > > Antoine. > > >
