[Frank Cox]

One other issue that you might want to take into consideration is that by adding exceptions to your code you're increasing its complexity and decreasing its long-term maintainability.

When you add conditional after conditional to account for version 1 of object x and version 2 of object y and version 16 of object z, after a while you end up with Microsoft Word where literally none of the programmers involved in its development has a good overall understanding of exactly how and why it does what it does.

I get a kick out of the docx "standard" where many of the so-called standards are literally stated as "do this like MS Word 6 does it".

Look at your code from the point of view of yourself six years down the road.  Are you going to be wondering why in the blue schmoo that block is there and trying to figure out a way to get rid of it without breaking something?