Break from the past?

[Richard Gaskin]

One of my original goals for the MC IDE was that it work with all 
versions of the engine from the time it was made open source forward.

But there are two aspects of the MC IDE which make this difficult:

- libURL is no longer backwardly compatible

- RunRev introduced new cursor images using the IDs of
   existing ones, which breaks from the 13-year legacy.

On the latter issue it was my hope that RunRev would recognize the value 
of honoring their user's existing work, and quickly introduce a v2.5.1 
which would correct that lamentable decision.  Alas, no v2.5.1 appears 
forthcoming after these many months, and all requests for honoring 
existing IDs have met with no affirmative response.

So whether wise or not, we live in a world in which the IDs have changed 
and we need to deal with that.  Manually altering the relevant IDs in 
the engine will take care of all new work going forward; only your own 
copies of MC cursors will remain affected.

And by using the current libURL without worrying about how to accomodate 
older engines we get one that's roughly half the size, since it wouldn't 
need to do the script-swap that David Cragg has nobling been pondering 
on our behalf.

So in short, the question is:  Are we comfortable with the final release 
of MC IDE v2.6 being compatible only with engine v2.6 and later?

I may have been the only one who was pushing for continued backward 
compatibility, and I'm over it now. :)

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Media Corporation
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  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com       http://www.FourthWorld.com