[mapserver-dev] Documentation Question

[Jeff McKenna]

Hi Steve,

My position is that the doc contents should contain references to the 
MapServer version that the feature applies to.  So yes we should 
maintain backwards compatibility.  For example, /mapfile/expressions.txt 
could be separated into "MapServer 6.0 Expressions" and "MapServer 5 
Expressions" sections.  I would argue that this is much easier to 
maintain, and makes more sense to a user.  It does ask doc contributors 
and developers to specifically mention the MapServer version when they 
are documenting though.  I'll give an example of what I mean:

Let's say I am a mapscript dev and I add a function to a mapscript. 
Then I'd go to its doc (meaning: in trunk and also in 
branch-whatever-is-live-on-web, because a user wants to know what is 
available) and add:

GetXXX
   Added in MapServer version 6.2, this function gets the...



I hope this helps clarify my position.

-jeff



On 11-07-21 1:42 PM, Steve Lime wrote:
> Question for folks. What's our position regarding multi-version support
> within the documentation? For example, there were a number of syntax
> changes related to logical expressions in 6.0. We could update the
> documentation to reflect 6.0 "as is" with no references to how things
> worked in older versions. We could also try to maintain some backwards
> compatibility so that the documentation could support all versions.
> Doing so requires lots of extra explanation though and makes it harder
> to maintain. If documentation is version specific then that would argue
> for historical documentation to be made available...
>