On Wednesday 20 February 2008 17:45, Micha wrote: > On Wed, 20 Feb 2008 21:39:12 +0100 > > Jean-Marc Lasgouttes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Micha <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > >> So for example you applaud if microsoft decides that each and every > > >> software they issue will be restricted to run only on vista, right? > > >> Curiously, they do not do that. > > > > > > curiously, nothing runs properly on vista, including vista, and they > > > keep implying that nothing will run ok off vista very soon so I guess > > > you are wrong. > > > > You still did not tell me whether you thought it was the right way to > > behave :) > > Nothing microsoft is a good way to behave. But more to the point I believe > that if the new library brings in enough usefulness it's good to migrate. > If keeping backward compatibility is not too hard it's useful too, but is > of lower priority. > > look at the other side of the coin, if the dev's spend all their time > maintaining backward compatibility they don't spend it on new features/bug > squashing etc. Also, for those of us using newer distros keeping the old > libraries around is not that easy either.
Hi Micha, I think there's a happy medium. It would be hard to keep the base happy if, for instance, Qt 4.4 were put into LyX a week after Qt4.4 went stable. Most would be at the mercy of packagers if that were done. On the other hand, it would be hard to gain new users and keep the base happy, and would royally perturb developers if backward compatibility extended 5 years. My personal opinion of the sweet spot would be 3 years of backward compatibility. The stable distro incorporates stuff 6 months old, the average user gets the distro when it's maybe 4 months old, and a fair number of users upgrade their distro as seldom as every 2 years. A 2 year back compatibility might also be considered reasonable, but any less than that and a significant number of users will be using old LyX because it's too hard to fit their current OS with new LyX. > > In this case I believe that qt4 was a right choice (for a whole lot of > reasons) and dropping xforms support was also a right choice (for a whole > lot of not completely disjoint reasons). In hindsight, I'm not going to disagree with you, always assuming it would have taken extra work to leave xforms in. My concern was more with the choice of 4.1.5 as a minimum rather than earlier 4.x (I actually got it working with 4.1.4). My point is, if one's distro is less than 2 years old, it's a PITA to upgrade Qt just to run an app. And what if upgrading Qt breaks other apps (it's been known to happen). > > On the other had you should let the new libraries mature before running > over to them (and qt4 has done that). The preceding sentence pretty well sums up my thoughts. SteveT
