IRC discussion on i18n, xml/utf8, and 1.8->2.0 data migration issues

[Chris Shoemaker]

On Fri, Feb 03, 2006 at 03:10:45PM -0500, Dan Widyono wrote:
> > The user should be allowed to make an informed choice between losing
> > certain incompatible data and accessing their data with their older
> > software.
> 
> I propose this freedom be granted in the new version of GC (2.0) upon Saving
> As... (using GC1.8 file format) as opposed to adding logic in 1.8.

Well, for 1.8, there's not a lot of choice.  It's not
forward-friendly, never has been, and it's too late to change that.
The only choice is to either allow a backward-compatible "SaveAs.."
or not.  The default is obviously to not, since allowing it actually
requires some coding.  More than one dev has said they didn't think
this was very important, especially as it was never an option before.
FWIW, in my own priorities this is about a 7.5, which puts it above a
lot of other things but below at least four other things.  If it gets
coded, it gets coded.  I don't think Derek would mind this feature too
much, since it's not _unintentional_ data-loss, but quite deliberate.

Now, going _forward_, we can still choose either "forward-friendly",
"SaveAs...", or even both.  This decision is quite independent of what
to do about 1.8->2.0 and it probably needs to be made in the context
of a rethink about our data-file versioning method anyway.

-chris

> Other than that, I agree with giving the user an informed choice.
> 
> Dan W.