Recommendation is to avoid using the year nomenclature as this
information is already encoded in the git repo. Avoids needing to
repeatly update.
Also updates AUTHORS.txt from current repo with contributor names
When reading config options from files, it's important to make sure the
value makes sense - the incoming data could be anything, and may have
incompatible values or be otherwise unreliable.
This introduces a simple way to define and use "mapping tables" which
can map between a "native" value, probably an enum (but not necessarily)
and some external value, for example the value written to file.
This provides a decoupling between the two values, as well as sanitising
inputs and outputs. This is important, as over time, if there isn't a
decoupled interface, changing options result in corrupt configs, or a
proliferation of obsolete enum values kept for compatibility.
Seth Hillbrand
jean-pierre charras
John Beard