ReSpec using external references service is now live

Dear all,

it's something that we tinkered with several times, but that has finally 
been done and enabled (by Tobie — thanks!). Instead of shipping with its 
references database, ReSpec now consults an external service.

This has several implications:

• The code size that goes over the wire has dropped from 150k to 88k. 
That's a 42% drop. On a decent network, the FOUC is almost gone.

• If you were doing some monkey-patching of the references system in 
spite of multiple warnings that it will break, then the odds are good 
that you have breakage. Last I checked most people had stopped doing 
that so I hope things are okay.

• You can still have references private to your draft using localBiblio.

• When you want to make a change to the references, the place to do so 
is now: https://github.com/tobie/specref. This still requires editing 
the JSON file (for now). But the big advantage is that there is now no 
need to wait for a ReSpec build before your change will show up. As soon 
as a pull request is accepted, assuming you didn't break the JSON (the 
file is tested first), then the new entries are automatically deployed 
to http://specref.jit.su/.

• This includes all the goodies that Tobie and Marcos have been adding 
(structured references, aliases, support for previous dated versions, etc.).

Let me know if something breaks!

-- 
Robin Berjon - http://berjon.com/ - @robinberjon

Received on Wednesday, 22 May 2013 13:13:52 UTC