[Pythonmac-SIG] Appearance

[John W Baxter]

At 21:45 +0100 12/7/99, Jack Jansen wrote:
>The thing I'm still not 100% certain about is backward
>compatability. I see the following possible solutions which I'd like
>feedback on, but any other ideas are of course welcome too.
>
>1. Forget about backwards compatability. This is definitely the
>   easiest solution:-) I'm afraid it might be unacceptable, though,
>   because there are people with machines that can't run
>   Appearance. If so: please speak up.
>2. Have a special non-appearance directory in sys.path, probably
>   something like Mac:Lib:lib-noappearance. This directory would
>   contain versions of EasyDialogs, Framework and others plus their
>   resource files. This directory should be prepended to sys.path
>   either by the installer or by the user (probably after a warning
>   message by the appearance-EasyDialogs or so). The non-appearance
>   modules would probably eventually start lagging behind in
>   functionality. An alternative of this might be the reverse: have
>   the appearance versions in lib-appearance and the compatible ones
>   in the standard sys.path.

I would be content with either #1 or the variant of #2 in which the
appearance module collection is the default, and special action is needed
(one-time) for the backwards compatibility.  I don't have any machines
which I run at all which can't run Appearance (somewhat slowly in the case
of my 8100/80).

Priority for things like the EditPythonPrefs applet change would be rather
low for me (I can't remember the last time I ran it except when Installing
a Python version, and I don't need the new look to do that).

I don't thing #3's effort would be worth it:  it might seem so today, but
there will be fewer non-Appearance machines as time goes on.

  --John
-- 
John Baxter   jwblist@olympus.net      Port Ludlow, WA, USA