Use of static var in MapScript mapObj.nextLabel

[Frank Warmerdam]

Tamas Szekeres wrote:
>>
>> As the "Ghost of Backward Compatability" I'd rather not get rid of
>> getNextLabel() if it is in significant use without a very serious reason.
>> We might however make an effort to deprecate it in favor of 
>> getLabel(int i).
>>
> 
> Frank,
> 
> The next major release is the best option to get rid of the unwanted
> parts of the interface.
> Moreover the current nextLabel is quite unconventional and does not
> allow the client to reset the iteration. I have no idea what is the
> desired use this function then. When we build up a loop until the
> returned value is null we might not get all of the results back. It's
> definitely unfeasible. Though we are thinking of that support of
> resetting the iteration, I guess it goes against the idea of the
> deprecation.

Tamas,

Well, I respectfully disagree.  If the interface works, and is in
reasonably widespread use, and we have no compelling reason for
removing it then I don't think we should remove it.

Changing stuff like this is going to be a poke in the eye for folks
trying to maintain higher level applications, especially if they would
like them to work with 4.10 and 5.0.

Deprecating normally involves advising that a particular interface is
no longer intended for use, but not actually removing it for some
time into the future (perhaps at MapServer 6.0).

On the other hand, this might be a good time to remove some cruft
that we deprecated at 4.0.

I'm not a genius programmer, and I'm not particularly skilled at
web applications.  But there is one thing that I know.  Interface
churn costs user-base, and a stable API shows love for the user-base.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org