Oh maybe to add to that... a solution that we currently deployed when it comes to drivers (such as the swissranger), is 
to publish both PointCloud and PointCloud2 (see stereo_image_proc), so that might work for you. Just use /points and 
/points2, if you want to be consistent to stereo_image_proc. We'll do the same for the laser assembler soon.

Cheers,
Radu.

Radu Bogdan Rusu wrote:
> Well, Josh is right, so Patrick, put differently... I don't see any of 
> us spending any more time and effort to develop _new_ 
> processing/algorithmic capabilities for PointCloud, so if need the new 
> processing algorithms that we are currently developing, then you need to 
> switch to PointCloud2.
> 
> Cheers,
> Radu.
> 
> Josh Faust wrote:
>>  
>>
>>     However, we encourage new users to switch to PointCloud2 and make
>>     use of our Point Cloud Library (PCL) for
>>     processing. At some point in the future, PointCloud and
>>     point_cloud_mapping will be deprecated and removed.
>>
>>
>> No we don't, as neither of them are in the boxturtle release.  There 
>> are currently no stable libraries built on top of either PointCloud2 
>> or PCL, so we continue to recommend using PointCloud for now unless 
>> you require bleeding edge capabilities and are willing to live with 
>> instability across all the ROS libraries.
>>
>> Josh
> 

-- 
| Radu Bogdan Rusu | http://rbrusu.com/