Dont start a discussion, then say you dont want to discuss. Doesnt sound particulary good, does it?
Secondly, Lotus has and probably always will state that the migration path is server -> Client -> app.
If you use the R6 designer to edit an R5 database on an R5 server to be used by R5 users, doesnt this sound a little foolish ? You know how easy it is to introduce a featurette that will *only* work on R6 ? How do you test that ?
Do I like it ? Not particularly. But its almost impossible with any computer program (let alone one with 40m lines of code - such as notes) to guarantee that if you mess with a previous version with the latest version, it wont cause problems.
We've [the folks on this forum] been doing this for years. Does it cause pain ? No. Okay, I'd love to be using v6 for my current product (iDm -
http://www.hadsl.com) - its got 20,000 lines of script (so far) and over 60+ class structures. And thats before we get to LSX and GUI.
But we have to support v5 customers. So we cook the code in v5. We leverage our v6 features by overriding specific classes with v6 classes.
Does it cause a pain ? No.
I'd much rather devote my time and energy to driving the product forward. (Optional loading of lotusscript libraries - ' use "*fred" ' - would *really* float my boat)
See the earlier rant about backward compatibility for more evidence.
Lastly. I'm doing (another) project right now -analying 40,000 customer databases, (thats over 20 million code sequences) - migrating them from v4.6 to v5 or v6.
Do you know how many @formula/Lotusscript items are *not* upwardly compatible with newer versions ? About four. That affects about 150 separate code sequences across the ENTIRE customer 1.5 terrabyte domino environment, servicing almost 20,000 users (and has been doing since the advent of version 3).
[As an aside, mid-rant, you *wouldnt believe* how many undocumented @functions I've came across.. Perhaps a page on my site sometime]
Forgive me if I sound as if I dont care - but what *other* software platform can you do this on ? Migrate 5+ year old code onto ANOTHER platform. And only find a handful - not even a PERCENTAGE point of problems ?
Right.
And here's you trying to "run with scissors" in terms of version incompatibilty, and then claiming that its not backward compatibility ?
Forgive me if I dont sound overly sympathetic.
---* Bill
[Yes. I'm cranky today. Yes, I've not had a lot of sleep. Apologies if it sounds overly agressive].