[Interest] Current QDataStream format documentation?

[Reinhardt Behm]

On Friday 23 September 2016 17:41:30 Jason H wrote:
> > Sent: Friday, September 23, 2016 at 11:14 AM
> > From: "Thiago Macieira" <thiago.macieira at intel.com>
> > To: interest at qt-project.org
> > Subject: Re: [Interest] Current QDataStream format documentation?
> > 
> > On sexta-feira, 23 de setembro de 2016 17:05:26 PDT Jason H wrote:
> > > > Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2016 at 10:12 PM
> > > > From: "Thiago Macieira" <thiago.macieira at intel.com>
> > > > To: interest at qt-project.org
> > > > Subject: Re: [Interest] Current QDataStream format documentation?
> > > > 
> > > > On sexta-feira, 23 de setembro de 2016 03:01:40 PDT Jason H wrote:
> > > > > The documentation should be current. Maintaining documentation is
> > > > > part
> > > > > os
> > > > > selling the toolkit.
> > > > 
> > > > The maintainer of QDataStream (me) disagrees. I don't like the
> > > > versioning
> > > > support in the first place, since it's an all-or-nothing.
> > > 
> > > So the expectation is that I dig through [thousands, hundreds, dozens?]
> > > of
> > > commits to find out what changed? I wouldn't even know where to start.
> > 
> > The expectation is that you read QDataStream with QDataStream. You don't
> > need to know what it writes, only that it can read what it writes.
> 
> Which is great until it's writing to another device that does not implement
> Qt, because it's an Arduino or similar. I don't think it's an unusual
> scenario that you're using QDataStream to exchange data to a device that
> does not implement Qt.

Or the have two devices are both based on Qt, but different versions. As 
Roland said on the other thread, sometimes you are locked to older versions 
because of certification or other reasons that make it impossible to change 
the software running. You just can not always switch to the latest fanciest Qt 
version. I still support system that fly in helicopters developed 12 years ago 
and are based on Qt 3.3.3. They talk via satellite with a server on the ground 
and the customer pay literally per bytes transferred.