- From: Richard A. O'Keefe <ok@cs.otago.ac.nz>
- Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2015 14:36:55 +1300
- To: Jim Derry <balthisar@gmail.com>
- Cc: public-htacg@w3.org, html-tidy@w3.org, tidy-develop@lists.sourceforge.net
On 10/02/2015, at 3:13 pm, Jim Derry <balthisar@gmail.com> wrote: > Cross-posted to > [1]: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-htacg/ > [2]: https://sourceforge.net/p/tidy/mailman/tidy-develop > [3]: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/html-tidy/ > > Good day all, > > This is a request for comments about the treatment of `tidyReleaseDate()`. > > HTACG' current proposal and working branch currently is working on the assumption that we will move to a semantic versioning system as a replacement for a date-based version system. There is nothing about a semantic versioning system that forbids you offering timestamps *as well*. Release dates and versions are quite different, indeed, nearly independent things. (A patched release of an old version can be released after a new version.) Suppose a program (I have a particular one in mind) tells you that it is version 5.9.124867. What does that actually signify? Is that a recent version or an obsolete version? But when it tells me it was released on 2010/08/11 then I *know* that it is an old version *without having to check some web site to see what the latest version is*. > This has been implemented on the working branch using `tidyLibraryVersion()` in the API. Our goal is the first 5.0.0-rc.1 by February's end. > > While we will deprecate `tidyReleaseDate()` Why? And why should it be untrustworthy? If I want to answer the question "How likely is it that this version of Tidy might need updating", a release date is a better clue than a version number. Especially when your build tools should give you accurate release dates for free! One thing I will say is that wrong answers are, as a rule, WORSE than no answers.
Received on Wednesday, 11 February 2015 01:37:42 UTC