Uwe Stöhr wrote: > Am 07.12.2012 10:52, schrieb Jürgen Spitzmüller: > >> But as I just explained, backward compatibility is not > >> necessary. > > > > You didn't convince me. As JMarc pointed out, people work on different > > machines (I work on three, as well). And you are not allowed to always use > > the most up-to-date version on each (e.g. if one is controlled by a thir > > person admin) > > That is not our problem.
Sure it is. At least I consider it mine. > If you want to submit a paper you have to follow > the guidelines of the journal. They will not discuss with you. Either you > accept that or you are out. Of course. > For cases like modernCV: we can only support one version, so we have to > focus on the current one. We cannot know what old version somebody has > installed. If he encounters problems with that version, he will have to > update it anyway, independent of LyX. That's not the point. The point is that we need to assure that the traversion from and to older versions is maintained. If layout changes are involved, this is only possible with a file format change and lyx2lyx processes. And this means you cannot just change the layout within a maintenance release. > Why does nobody thinks about an average user? As such a user you don't not > even know what a layout is. All you need to know is that you have to select > a document class for your document class. And who decides what "the average" is? > If you see there 5 different > versions of one class, you will be forced to google their differences. This > costs more time than to update. And if you encounter problems, you will of > course first update to the latest version. Also almost all bug reporting > systems and mailing lists tell you that you should update before reporting > bugs, because it could have already been fixed. And please also note that > an average user does not care about LaTeX at all. None of my students knew > how the things work in the background (LateX-packages, -styles layouts, > TeX-engines, bibliography...) and they were able to write their reports and > theses without problems. > I'm therefore strictly opposed to bother the user with stuff he does not > need to know! And you know what he needs to know? > > In any case, a clean file format should always be priority. I understand > > that your approach is less work (for you), but that's life. > > That is not the point. Please give me one real (not hypothetic) an example > where backward compatibility of layouts are necessary! I already did. And others did. Please re-read the thread. > We never took care about layout backward compatibility, never! Huh? This "we" certainly does not include me. > What is if we add a layout that did not exist before? Of course this breaks > the backward compatibility. Yes, that's tolerated. Although it is an edge case (there are some good arguments to limit the inclusion of new layouts to major releases). > I was even forced in a long discussion to install LyX in a folder named "LyX > 2.0" instead of "LyX 2.0.5" with the argument that one doesn't need to have > 2 different versions of LyX installed. Although I stated that we could have > introduced a regression accidentally did not count. But now you tell me > that distinguishing between bugfix releases is important. This is > inconsistent. This point I do not understand. > Looking at other programs, please tell me one program that provides backward > compatibility. Even programs like Firefox introduce new things with every > release. If they add a new HTML5 feature you won't benefit from that if you > downgrade. Of course your HTML5 file will look different with Firefor 16 if > you are not using Firefox 17. And all the advisories are telling you that > you should always use the latest program versions for security reasons, no > matter what program. The same is with all Mozilla programs, the same is > with OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Inkscape, Gimp,... You might say these are > non-commercial programs and they want to save time, but that is not the > reason. Take commercial programs: You cannot even open for example > Solidworks files saved with version 2012 in version 2011. Your Word file > will look different in Office 2003 if you once saved it with Office 2010 > because Office 2010 added new features. Yes, that's one main reason why I have abandonded Office and switched to LaTeX/LyX. I consider this a main drawback of those programs. > It is impossible to provide > backward compatibility! No it isn't. It's hard, and it's probably not always possible to get it 100% You know how long it took me to write the recent beamer conversion/reversion routines? And they certainly will need to get improved. It was no fun, but it was a prerequisite for me to include the beamer revision at all. Jürgen > regards Uwe
