[PD] consolidate backward- and MaxMSP compatibility in Cyclone (was: Purpose of Cyclone)

[katja]

On Tue, Dec 22, 2015 at 11:51 PM, Alexandre Torres Porres
<porres at gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, newer patches with newer functionalities not working in older versions
> is how things go anyway, right? Vanilla 0-46 patches don't run in 0.45 and
> so on... there's no way around that I guess.

Right, in this context it is worth noting that any improvement in a
library has the potential of causing problems for people who use an
old version, yet it doesn't prevent us from fixing bugs.

Recall cyclone/count~ which used to make Pd crash when receiving the
'set' message. Everyone learned to not send it that message. Now that
the bug is fixed people may start using the set message, causing
spurious crashes for those who use the patch with an old cyclone
version. Oddly, the crasher bug fix may lead to a temporary increase
of crash incidents. The remedy is simple for everyone; upgrade to the
latest cyclone.

Extrapolating this to other improvements (an extra feature in a class
or a new class in a library): as long as you improve and add, it's
safe for everyone to simply use 'latest'. In contrast, if you take
away, things become amazingly complicated. Oddly again, this may be a
reason to not introduce an improvement or addition too quickly. You
want to be pretty sure you don't need to take it away later.

Katja