On Mon, Jul 23, 2007 at 02:31:57PM +0200, Helge Hafting wrote: > Dov Feldstern wrote: > > Hi > > > > w.r.t. bug 1820, I'm getting very confused about what constitutes a format > > change and what does not. > My understanding is that you're introducing a 'format change' whenever > your patch makes LyX create a .lyx file that cannot be read correctly by > a LyX version immediately before your patch.
Or also, the new LyX cannot read old .lyx files. > The obvious example is something completely new, like the listings stuff. > Subtle changes to existing features could also be 'format changes' though. > > > > > Generally, I think, a format change is when given an existing file F, I > > used to get latex output X, and due to a change in LyX I now get latex > > output Y. > The way I understand it, latex code generation has nothing to do > with format changes. Of course, people may still object if you're > adding something that requires a very new version of latex. If LaTeX output X is illegal, i.e., doesn't compile, then we shouldn't have a version change, as there obviously cannot be a nonzero user base for this feature under the old LyX version. If X and Y differ only insignificantly (like two different latin languages), then one may make the same choice. As I understand it now. > Format changes is when you're creating .lyx files incompatible with > the older LyX versions. The fix is to update lyx2lyx to handle it. > > What you describe seems to be a 'output change'. These tend to > be unpopular too. People generally don't want to have to update > their old documents - but of course lyx2lyx can be used to fix this > *if* the lyx file version number is incremented (i.e. you force this > to be a 'format change' too.) > > In such a case, we normally have lyx2lyx take file F and create file F', so > > the F' generates output X with the new version of LyX. > > > > However, is this what we want to do if we're fixing a bug? Precisely, that's the question. > Bug fixes sometimes needs a format change. If that is not ok due > to an upcoming release - then that bugfix may have to wait. Or > you can try for some kind of partial fix that do without a format change. - Martin
