paulruizendaal wrote:

>
>I am somewhat surprised that Sean's suggestion of some sort of
>config/dialect based solution did not get more discussion. Seems a
>sensible approach to me.
>
>
>

Expressed in the venacular, modes suck. Modes are the lexical
equivalent of untyped global variables. You should be able to look at
something and tell what it does. You should be able to extract
something in source form and recreate it elsewhere and have it work.
You should also be able to have a legacy application containing views
dependent on the old behavior extendable with new views with the new
behavior. It would even be nice to be able to upgrade an application
one view at a time from the old behavior to the new behavior trashing
the whole thing.

I think there's been enough discussion of the dialect 1 / dialect 3
problem to suggest that perhaps the dialect idea wasn't such a good one,
either.

And I'm going to argue that a benefit of maintaining backwards
compatibility to something you can't stand is an excellent, recurring
reminder that ill-considered features will haunt you for the rest of
your life, so think long and hard about what you implement.