mctools.mc v2.6b10 posted

[Robert Brenstein]

>The general consensus has been that we should not be afraid to break 
>with versions more than a year old, and at the time it seemed I was 
>the only one who liked the idea of having MC IDE compatible with all 
>versions of the engine since it went open source.
>
>But your suggestion sounds workable, and can be done with acceptable 
>effort. Given that v2.6 is the first MC IDE with plugins support 
>perhaps it's worth doing this for now, as long as we all acknowledge 
>that at some point down the road it may become a good idea to just 
>take the plunge and break with the past, keeping old versions 
>available for use with older engines while moving the current 
>version forward without saddling itself with that responsibility.
>
>If there are no objections I'll make that change once we confirm the 
>cursor IDs for splitters in Rev to avoid further incompatibility 
>issues.

Yes, we should not be afraid to break with the past. But if 
compatibility can be preserved with little effort, then it should 
still be preferable. Besides, cursors issue is not quite a regular 
incompatibility and it is not 100% clear that the issues are settled.


>The only other change outstanding at the moment is the proposal to 
>move the storage of pres out of the Home stack and into the 
>Preferences folder on Mac, Application Data on Windows, and a 
>mcPrefs.mc file in the program folder for UNIX/Linux.
>
>The benefit to doing this is that it begins to free us from being 
>bound to the Home stack, which we know will need to be replaced at 
>some point down the road, and allows options like FlipsIDE to retain 
>prefs when flipping into MC from Rev.
>
>If this idea remains attractive to the community it might be nice to 
>include it in v2.6 because at that point we have no firm 
>enhancements planned, making it a more complete baseline build that 
>we can stick with for a while.
>
>If there are no objections to doing this in this version I could 
>incorporate that into B11 for your review.

I concur that it might be a good time to move prefs out. It has to 
happen sooner or later. I haven't had time to check b9 but I thought 
this was one of the changes added already by Klaus.

Robert