Font_ApplyFields problem

[Philip Ludlam]

In message <545b95d24a.Tony at mk-net.demon.co.uk>
, Tony van der Hoff <tony at mk-net.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>On 30 Oct 2001, in message <001601c16172$044b6320$5fec86d9 at oemcomputer>,
>"Kevin Bracey" <kevin at bracey-griffith.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>
>[snip]
>> > > Oh, and can I add a vote for getting rid of all those horrible W
>> functions?

>> I'm also not so convinced that backwards compatibility can be said to be
>> such a dominant consideration for a statically linked library.
>> 
>The problem is that of users re-linking binary object code for which either
>the source is unavailable (e.g. 3rd party libraries), or lost. Linking an old
>module against a new OSLib would be disasterous.
That won't be an issue for RISC OS 5 - whenever that happens.

An idea for the future would be to remove any backwards compatibility
whenever OSLib become 32-bit/RISC OS 5 only.
At that point people would have to have the original source code for
a program if they needed to compile/link it with OSLib for the new OS.

>> :) I was just adding my voice to the voting. You should be keeping a tally
>> somewhere :)
>> 
>OK, I have just reviewed the OSLib-user archives for March/April 2000, when
>the discussion took place.

>Comments from other users were invited, but none were forthcoming, indicating
>that no-one else considered it a big deal. Or maybe it got too emotional?
Some of us weren't using OSLib at that time, nor on the mailing for that
matter.

[snip]

>However, given that we've now had a 18 month transitional period, what would
>users think of my renaming the 8-bit functions and handles as you suggest,
>thus allowing people to implement the old names as functions or macros in
>their own code, for which they can take responsibility?

I would vote for renaming the functions and handles.

I can understand why maintaining backwards compatibility would be hard,
but I wouldn't do it at the expense of functionality or ease.

We all say that one of the great features of RISC OS is that it is
backwards compatible - but that is only to a certain extent. We all know
that when the RISC PC came out there were lot of problems and not all of
them were games/demo related. The same happened with StrongARM; and
there have been problems with RISC OS 4 and now with Select. Each time
the decision was made in favour of features and better computing rather
than backwards compatibility.

Yours,

Phil L.
--
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