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<font face="FreeSerif">Today, someone came into #xiphos to say that
Daily (Jonathan Bagster's Daily Light on the Daily Path) was both
displaying oddly and causing hangs in latest Xiphos. We poked
around a while, coming to no sure conclusion because what I saw
was clearly not what he saw.<br>
<br>
Then I realized he had an old version, 1.0, while I have 1.6. And
then it was further discovered that 1.6 is available in Beta, not
in CrossWire main. Regular folks don't go poking around in Beta
much.<br>
<br>
Beta repo's Daily has been sitting there, waiting to go to main,
since February 2010. That's <i>5</i><i> years</i>. Well,
anyway, that's the date on most of mods.d/* there. Who knows when
it last actually changed. Maybe 5 years before that, for all I
know.<br>
<br>
The fellow upgraded Daily and <i>poof</i> no more problem. He
said it looks very different, and the set of verse citations has
changed.<br>
<br>
Some time back, I found myself wandering around
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.crosswire.org/wiki/Modules_in_the_beta_repository">http://www.crosswire.org/wiki/Modules_in_the_beta_repository</a><br>
<br>
What exactly is the point of having a beta repo?<br>
<br>
On this page, there are reporting dates back as far as 2007,
without further updates. That's pushing <i>8 years ago</i>. A
bunch are marked "known bad, do not test," as of 2007, 2008, or
2010. Well, what are they still around for, if they're "known
bad" and nothing can be expected ever to change that state?<br>
<br>
There is one comment in all of 2011...and that's the most recent
anywhere on the page. One in 2010. A small pile in 2009. By
far, most are in 2008.<br>
<br>
The level of commentary on display quality consists of e.g.
"Displays well in GS, BD, MS, SW" when Xiphos hasn't been
GnomeSword since 2009 (<i>6 years</i>) and Eloquent hasn't been
MacSword in roughly that long as well.<br>
<br>
Tisch has a notation that John 8:53 is broken, so I looked at my
copy: Yup, verse numbering skips from 11 to a gigantic 53 with no
intervening 12-52, and yet this notation is <i>6 years old</i>
with no evident progress toward making Tisch correct. And by the
way, Tisch is based on v2.5 of the text; by comparison, my
TischMorph is built from v2.7 of the same text, and it's lovely
and available in Xiphos repo.<br>
<br>
4 out of 5 Japanese Bibles are noted, "hold for 1.6.2 testing" and
yet we've got 1.7.3 or .4 released.<br>
<br>
The page as a whole hasn't seen a significant change in 3 years.<br>
<br>
Seriously, what's the point? What does it mean to be "beta" if
there is never movement away from that state, either toward
release or toward deliberate abandonment?<br>
<br>
Release them to main or kill them outright. Purgatory is bad
doctrine.<br>
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