[racket-dev] Adding the new plot library [was: Re: Plot?]

6 hours ago, Robby Findler wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 3:33 AM, Eli Barzilay <eli at barzilay.org> wrote:
> > Yesterday, Neil Toronto wrote:
> >>
> >> 1. Obviously, Module 2's path should be 'plot'. Right? And its
> >> documentation needs a note that it's deprecated. (I'll do that.)
> >
> > I don't know if it's that important, maybe poll the users list for
> > potential code that uses it?  If it is, then given that it's a
> > complete reimplementation, I think that it's fine to go with some
> > `plot/compat' or something like that -- it forces users who have
> > code to change files, but my guess is that most people used it
> > just to try stuff out in quick scripts, and on the other side you
> > have Doug who is deep enough into it that he'll most likely need
> > to change code anyway.
> 
> I don't think we should do that. And certainly not without a release
> or two of warning.

Do you know of any actual code that uses it?

The thing is that keeping things completely backward compatible means
keeping some C code (the fit thing), and that translates to a real
problem with linux distributions (see the Fedora point earlier).  Not
being completely backward compatible has the advantage of moving at
least the Fedora distribution faster (and I won't be surprised if
Debian/Ubuntu would have issues with this too -- I'm surprised they
didn't say anything about it so far).

To get that advantage, things will not be completely backward
compatible anyway, and in that case a change from `plot' to
`plot/compat' is a small price, IMO smaller than the benefit of
getting happy linux packages.

-- 
          ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x)))          Eli Barzilay:
                    http://barzilay.org/                   Maze is Life!