Proposal of removing PHP4 references from the manual
| From: | Maciej Sobaczewski | Date: | Sun, 13 Jul 2014 06:44:49 +0000 |
| Subject: | Proposal of removing PHP4 references from the manual | ||
| Groups: | php.doc | ||
| Request: | Send a blank email to phpdoc+get-969385028@lists.php.net to get a copy of this message | ||
I know - this is very controversial topic, but please, at least try to read my whole post, before you comment. This proposal is one step ahead from "Making PHP 5 a first class citizen rewrite"[1], but over four years passed since it was proposed[2], so I think that situation also changed a little.
The goal is of course increasing readability of the PHP Manual. 7th of August will be 6th anniversary of EOL for PHP4 line[3]. W3Tech claims that PHP4 is used by about 1.7% of all websites[4]. We can probably assume that most of these leagacy applications are no longer maintained, so their developers don't really need documentation for PHP4. Removing references to PHP4 is one of the methods of urging people to upgrade from PHP4 and we want it, don't we?
*Proposed ways of reducing impact*
We can still reduce impact connected with PHP4 informations removal by:
1) linking to the migration guide from PHP4 to PHP5 on http://php.net/docs.php and http://php.net/manual/en/about.phpversions.php
2) providing snapshot of manual containig informations about PHP4 - determine SVN revision where manual describes mostly PHP4 and not so many things from PHP5, so probably something about six years old. Checkout it, build in few formats, upload do doc.php.net and provide links on http://php.net/download-docs.php page.
3) something more? Feel free to propose.
*Dealing with removal*
- determine base version described in the manual - probably just 5.0.0 to omit additional confusion
- remove all entries from changelogs for versions lower than PHP 5.0.0
- remove functions not available in PHP5
- remove extensions for PHP < 5.0.0 (if we have such)
- remove all inline references, notes etc.
Let the storm begin, all thoughts are appreciated.
[1]: https://wiki.php.net/doc/todo/php5rewrite
[2]: http://markmail.org/message/vtxwpxutxtudhym7#query:+page:1+mid:vtxwpxutxtudhym7+state:results
[3]: http://php.net/eol.php
[4]: http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-php/4/all