On Oct 3, 2009, at 8:51 AM, Hannes Magnusson wrote:
On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 17:33, Álvaro G. Vicario
<alv...@demogracia.com> wrote:
2009/10/3 Hannes Magnusson <hannes.magnus...@gmail.com>:
On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 14:56, Rich Bowen <rbo...@rcbowen.com> wrote:
Is there a continuing need to cover PHP4 in the installation
documentation?
Ideally, nobody is installing PHP4. Should we really be
encouraging them to
do so?
My inclination is to remove references to PHP4 in the install
docs, but I
wanted to see if there was wider consensus on this.
Like with the PHP4 OO docs, they should either be removed or at most
refactored into an appendix.
In fact, I would love to see any references to PHP4 go bye bye. Even
the functions versioninfo, there is no reason to mention PHP4
anymore.
I understand that you move older versions to the appendix section,
but
I don't think it's necessary or even useful to remove all traces that
they ever existed. Knowing when a function became available is
extremely useful. Maintaining code in a legacy server is hard enough
without resorting to trial and error.
Which is the reason why we still have the docs available.
We do have a page for PHP3 [1], but this is a bit harder to do with
PHP4...
The install docs and such things can easily be refactored into a php3
style page, but the extension and function information is bit harder
to work on..
PHP officially dropped support for PHP4 long long time ago, I don't
think its appropriate that we still have these docs as
first-class-citizens anymore.
As we discussed in a recent OOP thread[2] (somewhere, it sorta turned
into three discussions), the wording of the manual should reflect PHP
5 as the current. So, no "As of PHP 5, ..." type stuff and I think we
all agree on that. Luckily PHP 6 shouldn't change too much and each
function has a unicode role, so we should be fine and stand the test
of time.
As for PHP 4, it's still a semi-popular version and I prefer we ponder
a bit longer before changing everything. The installation chapter is a
clear case however, as we aren't teaching people how to install PHP 4
(The INSTALL file still does). At most, a small note saying something
like "PHP 4 users: Instructions may differ, see the included INSTALL
file for details." would work. But, usage is a different story.
For example, our current form of versioning has "PHP 5" == "Not in PHP
4" so simply removing all instances of PHP 4 from there would be
confusing. I don't have a solution and understand the desire but think
another approach can be found. We could assume PHP 4 and only list
minor versions (like 4.3.0) but that's not great either and sorta
defeats the purpose. Thoughts?
Regards,
Philip
[2] http://markmail.org/thread/qcdve46tp4zamlb6
[1] http://www.php.net/manual/php3.php
