Re: [h5md-user] Make "time" optional?

[Felix Höfling]

Am 15.07.2014, 14:33 Uhr, schrieb Pierre de Buyl <address@hidden>:

> All the points you mentioned (abuse of the format, rule-bending) will  
> cause
> trouble if not handled properly.
>
> This all might lead to H5MD 2.0 arriving sooner than expected but it is  
> much
> preferable to have that than to have H5MD fade into oblivion! Depending  
> on the
> backward-compatible character of the changes (as mentioned by Peter) it  
> might be
> either 1.1 or 2.0. As Peter wrote, nothing to worry about but we should  
> indeed
> respect the versioning that we've chosen.
>
> P

Concerning the versioning, we need an (internal) definition of what
"backwards compatiblity" means. As I indicated earlier, I suggest
something like

"For y > x, the format version 1.y is backwards compatible to 1.x if a
reader expecting 1.y can deal with 1.x."

An old reader expecting 1.x can not handle 1.y, of course. This means that
1.y is a superset of 1.x, it may be more relaxed or include additional
fields.

Felix