[sword-devel] Future MacSword

[Manfred Bergmann]

Hi DM.

Mac Users should be used to that all of a sudden some software support  
is just canceled.
Just kidding. :)
But still, I think they are used to such things more than Windows or  
Linux or even Java users.
Apple sometimes is very restrictive and makes hard cuts themselfes.

But you are right, having support for the last two major OS releases  
would be good.

Maybe we can have it like this:

- MacSword 1.2.1 for Jaguar, Pather, Sword 1.5.8
This version will not be changed any longer.

- MacSword 1.3.x for Pather, Tiger, Leopard, Sword 1.5.10
Critical bugs will be fixed.
Creating a bundle with default modules.

- MacSword 1.4 for Tiger, Leopard, Sword 1.5.10 and above
Backport of Sword backend changes from Eloquent to MacSword.  
Integration of Module Installer.
This would imply though that Module Installer would need to have the  
Objective-C 2.0 stuff removed.
But after looking into Objective-C 2.0 I think it does not have so  
many enhancements that it justifies abandoning Tiger users.
I think I will look into doing that.


Regards,
Manfred




Am 11.03.2008 um 21:57 schrieb DM Smith:

> Manfred Bergmann wrote:
>> it would be a Leopard only
>> application.
>> IIRC the majority of users that had questions about MacSword actually
>> were using Leopard.
>>
>
> We have thought about which OSes we should support for BibleDesktop.  
> The
> conclusion was to support at least the current and the previous and to
> not actively support earlier versions. We also concluded that we would
> not knowingly prevent earlier platforms from running the latest  
> release
> without great gain.
>
> The way this came about is that we upgraded to Java 5. This was over a
> year after Tiger had been released. I had just gotten a Mac Mini with
> Tiger and was un-aware that Java 5 would never be ported to Panther.
> Within the next few weeks we got reports that it wouldn't run on
> Panther. We then downgraded back to Java 1.4.2.
>
> Our target users include missionaries, pastors, churches, ... with  
> old,
> hand-me-down laptops.
>
> At the time, BD was not close to being feature complete and had some
> nagging bugs. For support reasons, it was not the appropriate time to
> make such a change. I didn't want to be suggesting that a user had to
> pay money (for an OS upgrade) to use our software.
>
> Once we are reasonably feature complete and relatively bug free, we  
> plan
> to do a major development shift to using WebKit (or its equivalent on
> other platforms). This may prevent us from running on older OSes.
>
> If you were to announce a MacSword upgrade, I think that many would  
> want
> to get the upgrade. Especially since your beta is so much better  
> than 1.2.x.
>
> All this is to recommend that Leopard is very recent and Tiger  
> shouldn't
> be abandoned just yet.
>
> -- DM
>
>
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