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. 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.
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.
This proper conversion would also prevent that people cannot process
anymore their old paper because the layout names change.
This is not a good idea. When I want to submit to a journal or update my CV
I would still want to have my old file compilable and only need to change
2, or 3 things quickly. And this is possible with all my layout changes
(except of modernCV as I wrote).
The suggested approach allows all: You can switch to the new layout (and
change "2 or 3 things") and you can still use the old layout.
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. 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!
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!
We never took care about layout backward compatibility, never! Have we ever got even one complaint?
What is the benefit of forcing the users to wait until he can again use a layout to submit journal
articles? At some point, sooner or later, we must add layouts to fulfill the submission guidelines,
so why not as soon as possible to keep a layout usable?
What is if we add a layout that did not exist before? Of course this breaks the backward
compatibility. But OK, what is the problem, at some point we have a new feature that is not
available in an older LyX version. But if a user requests a layout for journal BBB, why should we
not provide it with the next LyX release that all users can benefit from it?
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.
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. It is impossible to provide backward
compatibility! But hey, who needs this? If you purchased Office 2010 why would you go back to Office
2003. I know that this is a thing to force people to buy every year a new version and as people want
to save money they hate the companies for that. But LyX is free, you can always install the latest
version and I haven't met an admin who doesn't allow you that.
regards Uwe
