I have been following the debate between "fixing bugs" and "not breaking working code" with great interest and would like to submit a Modest Proposal (with apologies to Dean Swift, who wrote my favorite bit of prose in an entirely different context) for resolving the debate and keeping everyone happy. I'll use the recent popup thread as an example.

First, to keep the "not breaking working code" faction happy, keep all the current arguments to popup() and make the current behavior the default. Missing rows didn't display for cursor-based popups before and they won't now. The position number will be returned based on the display position, just as before, and so on.

Second, to keep the "fixing bugs" faction happy, add an optional parameter called "alternative_behaviors (alt_behav)", a multivalue array, defined as follows:

alt_behav= TRUE, return missing rows for cursor based popups

alt_behav= TRUE, return position in cursor of selected row(s)

alt_behav= string to display when row is missing

alt_behav= …behavior to accommodate next "bug fix"…

In this way, we've squared the circle and made popup as flexible as it was originally intended to be. I can easily add this new parameter to the documentation.

Comments?

Ira

ira@irakrakow.com

Ira,

I ate cereal for breakfast. What did you eat?

Gerald

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