On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 3:11 AM, Sylvester Keil <[email protected]> wrote: > If a feature differs so much that the underlying syntax changes or that new > elements need to be created, I don't think it's fair to call it backwards > compatible. Such a feature should go into a major release and the legacy > feature should be dropped completely. By doing this you're actually *helping* > implementers to provide backwards compatibility, because they can simply look > at a style's version and tell whether they need to follow the 'new' or 'old' > way.
With the CSL 1.0.1 release, we had a similar issue with the algorithm for ordinals, as you're well aware. But if we had done what you propose, and drop the "old" algorithm from the spec, we would either have had to: - drop the feature from CSL 1.0.1 and release it as a 'clean' backwards compatible release; or - release 1.0.1 as a backwards incompatible release. That would have involved the need to update all the existing styles in the repository to the new logic. Also, all CSL-implementations (like Zotero and Mendeley) would have to make sure from that point on to feed their CSL processors 1.0.1 styles, either by internally updating styles, or by complaining that 1.0 styles are no longer supported, which would be a headache for users with customized and/or not-auto-updating styles. I understand the downside of having to implement two algorithms, but from a user perspective the transition from CSL 1.0 to 1.0.1 was much smoother than from 0.8.1 to 1.0, and I thought you rather liked the new ordinal logic (to which you contributed yourself). Rintze ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Learn Graph Databases - Download FREE O'Reilly Book "Graph Databases" is the definitive new guide to graph databases and their applications. This 200-page book is written by three acclaimed leaders in the field. The early access version is available now. Download your free book today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/neotech_d2d_may _______________________________________________ xbiblio-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xbiblio-devel
