[RFC|Rejected] Removal of subsilver2

[MattF]

About support of SS by community:
I think it is impossible. Because phpbb team will probably take care how to create output suitable for PS and probably this output will be unable to optimize for other styles.
Users, skilled in XHTML/JS/CSS enough to support SS2 probably will no do that. Because they using phpbb not because they have time to have fun, but because they require it. They able support SS2 at level of their requirements independely, but they probably will never take care to lose time to share their work to other part of community.

How do you think phpBB came to exist or continues to be developed? There is no phpBB headquarters. There is no staff, no payroll, no official organization or corporate entity. It is entirely community-based, developed and maintained by people willing to volunteer their time and energy to the effort. Actual phpBB users have become phpBB developers:

The phpBB teams are made up of people from around the world; a tribute to the diverse audience of phpBB™ itself.

Bottom line, if there are style authors willing to make subsilver2 based styles, there will most certainly be style authors willing to perpetuate subsilver2 itself. It would be easy for any competent style author to port future prosilver style updates over to subsilver2 styles

[Marshalrusty]

There is no staff, no payroll, no official organization or corporate entity.

That's not entirely true. There is staff (the team), although they are not on any payroll. There is no payroll. There is a corporate entity (phpBB Ltd.) and there has always been an official organization under common law.

It is entirely community-based, developed and maintained by people willing to volunteer their time and energy to the effort. Actual phpBB users have become phpBB developers:

That's absolutely true.

Bottom line, if there are style authors willing to make subsilver2 based styles, there will most certainly be style authors willing to perpetuate subsilver2 itself. It would be easy for any competent style author to port future prosilver style updates over to subsilver2 styles

I am still against the idea of dropping support for a style that is used by a large portion of the community. Part of the idea of 3.1 (as opposed to 4.0) is that a large portion of backwards compatibility is maintained. Many MODs should continue to work under 3.1 and many others will need a tiny bit of updating, but not so much that the former code needs to be removed. Dropping support for subsilver2 forces all present subsilver2 users to use another style and have to reMOD that entire style from scratch. As such, I have a very serious problem with the decision, and it needs to be re-examined.

[DavidIQ]

I think it is impossible. Because phpbb team will probably take care how to create output suitable for PS and probably this output will be unable to optimize for other styles.

That makes no sense whatsoever. There is nothing currently that optimizes something specifically for any style nor do I see a reason for anything like that in the future. There is also nothing the software outputs that is only meant to be handled by prosilver (besides the stylesheet handling but that's another topic entirely). If it's not handled in a subsilver2 based style that is the style creator's choice. Where did you get that from?

[rxu]

I am still against the idea of dropping support for a style that is used by a large portion of the community. Part of the idea of 3.1 (as opposed to 4.0) is that a large portion of backwards compatibility is maintained.

In this case we can do the following. Keep the decision of dropping subsilver2 from phpBB package but continue maintaining of subsilver2 to be up to date with 3.1 latest code. That means official support won't be dropped and subsilver2 code changes will be provided for 3.1.x releases.
The benefits of this variant I see:

• We keep only prosilver in phpBB package, further development will be kept for this style only;
• By leaving only prosilver in phpBB package we increase using of it for new installations;
• We keep official support and updates for userbase using subsilver2 and leave them satisfied;
• With the points above we provide preparation for users to smooth migration to the future phpBB 4.0.
• etc.

[Marshalrusty]

In this case we can do the following. Keep the decision of dropping subsilver2 from phpBB package but continue maintaining of subsilver2 to be up to date with 3.1 latest code. That means official support won't be dropped and subsilver2 code changes will be provided for 3.1.x releases.
The benefits of this variant I see:

• We keep only prosilver in phpBB package, further development will be kept for this style only;
• By leaving only prosilver in phpBB package we increase using of it for new installations;
• We keep official support and updates for userbase using subsilver2 and leave them satisfied;
• With the points above we provide preparation for users to smooth migration to the future phpBB 4.0.
• etc.

That would be like deprecating it, which is fine with me. I would, however, still prefer for it to be available with the 3.0.x => 3.1 updater, since that is where I think most users will get confused. Not only that, but having to reapply all MOD changes (many of which, realistically, they have long since forgotten about) to a new style would keep them from updating to 3.1 until the very last minute, which is something that we probably want to discourage.

If you guys no longer wish to maintain 2 styles, then I can definitely understand that. My concern is for the current subsulver2 users who would be stranded between 2 non-major releases (which is never supposed to happen).

[rxu]

I would, however, still prefer for it to be available with the 3.0.x => 3.1 updater

Surely, if we'd decide to keep subsilver2 code up to date with 3.1, I think it's automatic update from 3.0.x to 3.1.x wouldn't be a problem.

[naderman]

I very much favour this option as well. But the question is how do we want to keep maintaining it? If we want to guarantee proper support we need to keep it in the repository. We can then still exclude it from the standard distribution at release time. As for the updater, yes we should definately find a solution that is acceptable for subsilver2 users.

[onehundredandtwo]

Just in reply to naderman's post, the fact is, prosilver is semantically better than subsilver2. Tables should not be used for layout - only for, well, tables.
That is why I am in favour of getting rid of subsilver2.

[ToonArmy]

I very much favour this option as well. But the question is how do we want to keep maintaining it? If we want to guarantee proper support we need to keep it in the repository. We can then still exclude it from the standard distribution at release time. As for the updater, yes we should definately find a solution that is acceptable for subsilver2 users.

Agreed, this is a much more graceful way of deprecating the style. We can restore subsilver2 to its original location in the repository and remove it from the final downloads in the packaging script. The updater packages should continue to include it but they'll only update styles if they exist on the filesystem (if this doesn't happen already.) To provide a visual cue to the user about the status of subsilver2 the style.cfg syntax can be extended to add an optional message element that'll be presented to the admin in the styles management interface. This will warn those running phpBB from a git checkout, it'll also serve as a secondary reminder to anyone downloading from the styles DB.

[imkingdavid]

I can live with the deprecation idea that has recently sprung up. Still sort of support it, but slowly phase it out of the actual package (not including it in 3.1 by default, but supporting it in the upgrade).