Should we be so strict on maintaining backwards compatibility?

[Tom Eugelink]

On 2012-05-14 22:02, Slavko Scekic wrote:
> And what do you think, what changes would be worth breaking the backwards
> compatibility for?
>
>

There are some things I would break compatibility for. The first that immediately jumps in my mind is the maximum size vs intent to grow mix up. I had to patch MigPane (MigLayout for JavaFX) to create expected behavior. Assuming this was not altered (I haven't revisited the problem after it was decided that changing it would be too much work before J1), the problem is that if I want a Button to grow, you need to set its maximum size. This is strange of course, the maximum size denotes what the largest size is a Button can render itself, it has nothing to do with if it wants to grow or not. Growing is something that is determined in relation to other nodes and should be done by the layout (manager) use the maximum size as a constraint.

I would prefer breaking this behavior now, in 3.0, before too many JFX applications are written. Or everyone should start using MigPane of course ;-)

Tom