Re: [PATCH] Rename headline to heading

[Jim Porter <jporterbugs@gmail.com>]

On 8/14/2021 3:54 PM, Tim Cross wrote:
> I'm not convinced a transition period will help in this case. At some
> point, users will need to update their capture templates regardless.
> Provided this impact is clearly outlined in the NEWS.org file (I think
> there should be a specific reference to capture templates added in the
> patch to NEWS.org) and provided this change is applied to the next
> release only, no transition period is necessary.

I think having a transition period would be helpful here. First, this 
helps to account for users who may run multiple versions of Emacs with 
the same config. This could happen for a few reasons, such as running on 
different revisions of a GNU/Linux distribution, or even just because 
the user is testing out the latest/next version of Emacs.

In addition, a transition period makes it easy to inform users about 
what they need to do to upgrade. Without any compatibility code, the 
error message (likely) won't be very helpful, whereas even some minimal 
compatibility code could tell the user what edits to make to their 
config. While everyone *should* read the manual/NEWS, it's easy to miss 
things sometimes, and errors like this can be non-obvious, especially if 
the compatibility issue isn't directly in the user's config, but in some 
other third-party package.

As such, I think it would be nice to have a transition period of at 
least one Emacs version. Beyond that, I don't see any problems with 
excising old compatibility code. As you say, users will have to upgrade 
at *some* point.

- Jim