I'am absolutly +1 with these ideas, that are very clear.

Regards,
J.Pauli

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 9:45 PM, Philip Olson <phi...@roshambo.org> wrote:
>
> On Oct 11, 2010, at 12:20 PM, Julien Pauli wrote:
>
>> My example was http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.variables.predefined.php
>>
>> I have other examples of what I globally mean, these kinds are recurrent :
>>
>> -  "Note:  The null type was introduced in PHP 4."
>> -  "Warning :  Before PHP 4.3.0, appending to an array in which the
>> current maximum key was negative would create a new key as described
>> above. Since PHP 4.3.0, the new key will be 0."
>> - The whole chapter # Object Aggregation — Object
>> Aggregation/Composition [PHP 4]
>> - http://www.php.net/manual/en/session.configuration.php has lots of
>> PHP4 history like "session.gc_divisor ; Available since PHP 4.3.2."
>> - "PHP supports CLI SAPI since PHP 4.3.0"
>> - "Note : In PHP 4.0.3 and older, in order to use URL wrappers, you
>> were required to configure PHP using the configure option
>> --enable-url-fopen-wrapper ."
>> - "Note : The Windows versions of PHP earlier than PHP 4.3 did not
>> support remote file accessing for the following functions : XYZ"
>> - "Note : Heredoc was added in PHP4"
>>
>> etc...
>>
>> What I mean is that, yes we should keep an history because its
>> interesting to know what things happen, and when. But that history
>> *should be kept in a specific part of the doc*, and *not* in the
>> actual reference manual (regarding PHP4 at least)
>>
>> 99% of users visiting function or language specific pages of the
>> manual dont care about the NULL type having spawned in PHP4, or that
>> PHP supports CLI since 4.3.0. They are just looking for some info for
>> their code and they are often disturbed while grabbing info by some
>> "PHP4.X.Y things that are not here anymore in PHP4.XX.YY but back in
>> PHP5" so yes, we are in PHP5, why that sentence ?.
>>
>> We should keep an history, but in a specific chapter. People today
>> dont write code under PHP4, they *at least* maintain PHP4 apps alive,
>> but dont work on PHP4 code anymore.
>>
>> Now about PHP5, it could be the same for 5.0 or even 5.1. We should
>> have a debate about that as we can still see some PHP5.1 (RedHat)
>> apps, but talking about PHP4 : it just keeps the reading heavy and
>> sometimes even boring.
>
> There are two overlapping routes we can take here (and I'm sure others too):
>
> (A) Remove [most] all references to PHP 4.
>
> - This means we remove all the examples you showed because PHP 4 falls into 
> the category of PHP 3. It's just PHP. In other words, PHP always had NULL, 
> and foreach() always existed.
>
> (B) Make PHP 5 a first class citizen.
>
> - This means we talk about PHP 5 as PHP, so never have "As of PHP 5" because 
> PHP 5 is the present. This however still means we keep track of PHP 4.
>
> Although I used to lean towards (B), I think it's time we go with (A). This 
> means all PHP 4 history is moved to a single location, with PHP 3 being an 
> example:
>
>  - http://php.net/manual/php3.php
>
> One concern is comparing the PHP 4 version with the current 4->5 migration 
> guide. We don't want to lose anything, and because the migration guide 
> doesn't cover PHP 4.x.x specific changes there will be two documents: (1) The 
> 4->5 migration guide and (2) PHP 4 version specific changes. Does this sound 
> reasonable?
>
> Regards,
> Philip
>
>
>

Reply via email to