>>>>> "Karl" == Karl Berry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Karl> Harder: they can't just simply AC_PREREQ the version they Karl> use: they I don't think it would be a good idea for every Karl> Texinfo document to start AC_PREREQ'ing their version. Most Karl> documents don't use any new features and will work fine with any Karl> version of Texinfo. Yet if we make it easy, authors will put Karl> AC_PREREQ(4.2) or whatever and thus cause a gratuitious failure. I have another reading of this: it helps pushing old versions away, and I really think that's a major advantage. I perfectly understand how bad my position is for some people, but really, we are wasting a huge amount of time maintaining backward compatibility with things that simply should no longer exist. This is Free Software, and a reasonable amount of backward compatibility is needed, but not more. Let me take texi2dvi as an example: because of the (*�&$(*� backward compatibility there are crucial options, such as --batch, that Automake cannot use because we don't know if it is a texi2dvi recent enough. It results in poorer code. The same applied with old version of Autoconf and so forth. Karl> I'm not yet convinced there is anything we can do that will be Karl> all that much better than the way it is now, where new commands Karl> simply cause an error message. Agreed. But consider the fact that an `upgrade your Texinfo' message is not something you will hear about. An error on `@includeverbatim' is something you can receive as a bug report, or maybe the author of the Texinfo file. In that case, time is wasted by (i) the user who sent a bug report, (ii) Texinfo maintainers, and (iii) the package maintainer. And it will end in the user installing a newer Texinfo anyway. _______________________________________________ Bug-texinfo mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-texinfo
