Re: Proposal of removing PHP4 references from the manual

On 13 July 2014 12:38, Maciej Sobaczewski <sobak@php.net> wrote: >> On 13 Jul 2014, at 07:44, 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 most of these leagacy applications are no longer maintained, so their 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? >> >> >> I don’t think we should remove PHP4 from the manual. PHP’s current >> documentation approach is one manual for all the versions, unlike Python, >> which has one manual for each version. If we're removing PHP 4, then we >> should probably switch to the Python model, though myself I think there’s no >> point in having a manual for each 5.x version; we should just have a “PHP 4” >> manual (frozen in time) and a “PHP 5” manual. If PHP 6 (sorry, PHP NEXT ;) >> happens, that could have a “PHP 6” manual. > > > Not really. We already removed PHP3-specific content from the manual, PHP/FI > as well. They are available separately and linked here: > http://php.net/docs.php As long as we continue this with PHP4 (keeping a built version available on php.net) I am +1. As one of the 0.01% who still occasionally has to write for PHP4, I would find it most irritating if I had to actually build the manual myself in order to consult it... I propose that we fork off the manual from an appropriate point in time and host as "the PHP4 manual" in a static HTML version. Over time we could remove the PHP5 information from it - I would be happy to contribute heavily to this effort as I *need* a PHP4 manual and having one that does not contain any PHP5 information would actually be more useful. Thanks, Chris