Re: Proposal of removing PHP4 references from the manual

I think at this point it's absolutely fine to do it, as long as we keep snapshots of the old manual (as you suggested) for people who are stuck for whatever reason with this old version. My 2c. Sent from my mobile > On 13 ביול 2014, at 09:45, Maciej Sobaczewski <sobak@php.net> wrote: > > 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