On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 11:32 AM, Maciej Sobaczewski
<msobaczewski@gmail.com> wrote:
We could resurrect overload and domxml and export into .html page like
php3.php? Is that what they are asking for?
I think that providing compressed/online snapshot of specified revision
somewhere on doc.php.net would be more convenient and even easier to
prepare
for us. Opinion based on post written by Chris Wright in this topic.
No. Thats a major annoying maintenance headache.
We've got http://php.net/manual/php3.php (its thinner then I remembered?)
Lets add the PHP4 specifics (oop4, dotnet, sw, domxml, ...) to php4.php
there.
I still consider this approach more useful for users and simpler for us.
What's the problem in hosting built (downloadable) versions of specified
revision somewhere? Traffic? I'm proposing to build them only once, not
regularly. After that, anyone who may need manual containing info about PHP
4 will be able to download complete documentation, not two documents
incredibly hard to understand because they would refer each other
constantly.
What "two documents incredible hard to understand" are you talking about?
Exporting and maintaining a 12.000 file "old documentation snapshot" is a no no.
If search engines pick it up people may accidentally navigate to that
rather then the actual manual.
When layouts change errors will creep in (missing backend functions or styles).
We can compress it and provide as a downloadable package. It will also save some bandwidth. Also, I mentioned that using some old revision might be even better, because it doesn't contain so many informations about PHP5 stuff. So amount of 12k is not really true.
When servers are moved, files will be forgotten.
We're using SVN and we are going to use other VCS in the future - I see no problem in building it again in the last resort.
Aggregating it all into just one php4.php (e.g.
big-onepage-manual.html style) is the way to go imo.
These should all, along with any other inline version information, go
into changelogs.
These changelogs are a goldmine when looking through a application
that has been with us throughout time and received incremental
upgrades as time goes.
Lets not fuckover the people that has been with us this long.
Sorry, I have to answer it again. I missunderstood you and agreed on something completely different from my actual proposal.
To summup, I'm proposing:
- actual manual which treats PHP 5.0. as the earliest described version
- downloadable snapshot containing current references to PHP 4. Designed for anyone who might need it, for whatever reason.
This is defienietly not fucking people over. This is compromise between providing complete documentation for PHP 4 users, so they can use it in everyday work and making manual easier to read for most of the readers who are interested in PHP 5.x.
It satisfies both sides imho.
-Hannes
Thanks,
Maciej.