Assuming that we can make it work with the various rewrite rules and
stuff, here's what I'd like to see:
/docs/ still goes to /docs/1.3/ for the short term. We update those
docs to provide links to the improved resource. Later down the road
(6 months? a year?) we start providing distinct 1.3 vs latest links
on those pages, and then eventually move /docs/ to point to /docs/
current/
/docs/x.y/ goes to docs/x.y/ Duh
/docs/current goes to /docs/2.2 and gets updated with each
subsequent release.
404 goes to a helpful page explaining that the 1.3 version is
abandonware, and here's a link to a redirection thingy that might
know what you were looking for.
The downside is that we don't get seamless redirection for 1.3 links
(although we might in some cases) and so existing broken links
remain broken until someone takes the initiative to fix them. I'm
not persuaded by the "don't break links" argument. A good link to a
bad resource is a broken link, by definition.
After some further discussion on IRC, I suppose I'll say what I really
think.
Having /docs/ redirect to /docs/1.3/ no longer makes sense. /docs/1.3/
should be a permanent redirect to /docs/current/ which should be a 302
to /docs/2.2 (or whatever is current at the time).
We'll need to have some sensible handling of 404 conditions. A nice
404 handler with multiple choices would be great. But the time has
passed to be serving 1.3 docs as our default response for /docs/
requests.
I'm going to send Tony a patch to make this happen. I think that the
time has come.
--
Rich Bowen
[email protected]
