More than twenty years ago, Lochac was introduced to a new toy called Canon Lore. Built by Baron Karl Faustus von Aachen, commonly known as Fruitbat, it took all the good work of previous heralds and scribes in the Principality and Kingdom of Lochac and turned them into something new: a database that anyone could use, a reliable record of all the awards given by Lochac royalty from the earliest days of the Crown Principality.
That was then. This is now. Technology has evolved, and Fruitbat’s skills have kinda-sorta kept up. This new version of Canon Lore, version 2.0α (pronounced “alpha”), is a complete rewrite of the old Canon Lore, with bugs fixed, layout improved and… no new features at all.
(“Oh. That’s a bit disappointing, isn’t it?” But wait. Read on!)
2.0α has the single goal of laying the groundwork, but by itself it’s nothing new. I mean, it looks a lot different, and under the covers it takes advantage of two decades of learning and change, but it’s only the beginning.
Coming next is version 2.0β (“beta”). This will add some new features, some of them long-requested, but with a limit: none of the features will require changes to the underlying database. This is because editing the database is a big job that uses a separate piece of software. With 2.0β the goal is to stretch Canon Lore to its absolute limit while maintaining backward compatibility.
After that, naturally enough, we will see version 2.0γ (“gamma”), which will add features that have been requested but that require changes to the database. This will be the trickiest phase, requiring as it does coordination with the team working on the database editing software.
Finally, there will be one last version, simply labelled 2.0. This will be the fully-functional final version with all the features people could want and no bugs at all (Murphy willing). When it’s ready, the original version of Canon Lore on the Lochac server will be quietly retired, and all of this will be the new normal.
And then… we start thinking about the features to add to version 2.1…