HEADS UP: GCC manual soon to be printed

HEADS UP: GCC manual soon to be printed

[Gerald Pfeifer]

Lisa M. Opus Goldstein, who is Managing Editor, GNU Press, contacted
me because the GCC manuals are out of print at the FSF and she plans
to print a new edition in this spring.

Joseph already provided a couple of tex-nical details, but there are
some issues left which I'd to raise here:

 1) Given that GCC 3.3 is due during that period, and that 3.4 probably
 won't happen this year, I suggest the sources to be taken from our 3.3
 release branch.

 2) I'm currently trying to update our list of contributors and have
 already committed a couple of changes.

 If you have any further suggestions (apart from Roger's patch which
 I'm reviewing), please do not hesitate!  Self-nominations welcome.

 3) If you are currently working on changes to the manual(s) or are
 aware of pressing issues, please let us know ASAP so that we can
 take that into account and try to address them, respectively.

That's it from my side, but I'm sure Lisa will appreciate any kind of
further comments.

Gerald
-- 
Gerald "Jerry"   pfeifer@dbai.tuwien.ac.at   http://www.pfeifer.com/gerald/

Re: HEADS UP: GCC manual soon to be printed

[Joseph S. Myers]

On Wed, 2 Apr 2003, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:

>  3) If you are currently working on changes to the manual(s) or are
>  aware of pressing issues, please let us know ASAP so that we can
>  take that into account and try to address them, respectively.

The last modification dates in the manuals on the release branch should be
checked and updated (and then kept up to date until the manual version
that is printed is fixed).  (Most of the time, most manual changes do not
also update the last modified dates.)

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
jsm28@cam.ac.uk

Re: HEADS UP: GCC manual soon to be printed

[Zack Weinberg]

Gerald Pfeifer <pfeifer@dbai.tuwien.ac.at> writes:

>  3) If you are currently working on changes to the manual(s) or are
>  aware of pressing issues, please let us know ASAP so that we can
>  take that into account and try to address them, respectively.

The CPP manual is out of date in several respects - I have not been
prioritizing fixing that, but I can bump it up.

zw

Re: HEADS UP: GCC manual soon to be printed

[Janis Johnson]

On Wed, Apr 02, 2003 at 05:06:34PM -0800, Zack Weinberg wrote:
> Gerald Pfeifer <pfeifer@dbai.tuwien.ac.at> writes:
> 
> >  3) If you are currently working on changes to the manual(s) or are
> >  aware of pressing issues, please let us know ASAP so that we can
> >  take that into account and try to address them, respectively.
> 
> The CPP manual is out of date in several respects - I have not been
> prioritizing fixing that, but I can bump it up.

When you do that you might also try to shorten the section names, which
cause overfull boxes.

Janis

Re: HEADS UP: GCC manual soon to be printed

[Neil Booth]

Zack Weinberg wrote:-

> Gerald Pfeifer <pfeifer@dbai.tuwien.ac.at> writes:
> 
> >  3) If you are currently working on changes to the manual(s) or are
> >  aware of pressing issues, please let us know ASAP so that we can
> >  take that into account and try to address them, respectively.
> 
> The CPP manual is out of date in several respects - I have not been
> prioritizing fixing that, but I can bump it up.

What's out of date?

Neil.

Re: HEADS UP: GCC manual soon to be printed

[Zack Weinberg]

Neil Booth <neil@daikokuya.co.uk> writes:

> Zack Weinberg wrote:-
>
>> Gerald Pfeifer <pfeifer@dbai.tuwien.ac.at> writes:
>> 
>> >  3) If you are currently working on changes to the manual(s) or are
>> >  aware of pressing issues, please let us know ASAP so that we can
>> >  take that into account and try to address them, respectively.
>> 
>> The CPP manual is out of date in several respects - I have not been
>> prioritizing fixing that, but I can bump it up.
>
> What's out of date?

Mostly that I think all the comparisons to 2.95 behavior are less
useful now than they could be; and there are places where it talks
about something having changed in 'this release' where 'this release'
was 3.0.

zw

Re: HEADS UP: GCC manual soon to be printed

[Joseph S. Myers]

On Wed, 2 Apr 2003, Zack Weinberg wrote:

> Gerald Pfeifer <pfeifer@dbai.tuwien.ac.at> writes:
> 
> >  3) If you are currently working on changes to the manual(s) or are
> >  aware of pressing issues, please let us know ASAP so that we can
> >  take that into account and try to address them, respectively.
> 
> The CPP manual is out of date in several respects - I have not been
> prioritizing fixing that, but I can bump it up.

Could you consider having the CPP manual give the full version number of
the release it comes from (using gcc-common.texi) on the title page and in
the text, like the other manuals, rather than just the major version
number, and having the last updated date refer to any changes rather than
some notion of major changes?

(I don't know whether the CPP manual is going to be included in the
manuals to be printed.)

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
jsm28@cam.ac.uk

Re: HEADS UP: GCC manual soon to be printed

[Janis Johnson]

On Wed, Apr 02, 2003 at 12:18:50AM +0200, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:
> Lisa M. Opus Goldstein, who is Managing Editor, GNU Press, contacted
> me because the GCC manuals are out of print at the FSF and she plans
> to print a new edition in this spring.

From doc/standards.texi:

  @c FIXME: details of C++ standard

This really ought to be filled in before the manual is printed,
and ought to be easy for someone familiar with the standard.

Is someone looking at FIXME comments in general?

Janis

Re: HEADS UP: GCC manual soon to be printed

[Gerald Pfeifer]

On Wed, 2 Apr 2003, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:
> Lisa M. Opus Goldstein, who is Managing Editor, GNU Press, contacted
> me because the GCC manuals are out of print at the FSF and she plans
> to print a new edition in this spring.

Lisa, today we released GCC 3.3 and most of the changes we had planned
for the GCC manuals are now in; the remaining ones should follow by the
end of next week or so.  What is your current schedule concerning the
printing of the book(s)?

If anybody has outstanding changes which s/he would like to apply to the
3.3-branch, especially before the manuals are printed by the FSF, please
try to get them in ASAP.

Gerald
-- 
Gerald "Jerry"   pfeifer@dbai.tuwien.ac.at   http://www.pfeifer.com/gerald/

Re: HEADS UP: GCC manual soon to be printed

[Lisa M. Opus Goldstein]

Dear Gerald,


Thank you for the offical 'heads up' and all your work on updating the
manual.

I will wait until the end of May for the final changes to be added,
and then put the book into production.  Any remaining typos or
typsetting issues found along the way will be sent upstream to you
guys.

Please send me one more 'heads up' after all the final changes are
implemented, and the location of the offical tarball, so I can safely
go ahead with production.


Best Regards,


Lisa M. Goldstein           opus@gnu.org
Managing Editor, GNU Press  www.gnupress.org
Business Manager,           Tel 617-542-5942
Free Software Foundation    Fax 617-542-2652


Gerald Pfeifer <pfeifer@dbai.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:
> On Wed, 2 Apr 2003, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:
> > Lisa M. Opus Goldstein, who is Managing Editor, GNU Press, contacted
> > me because the GCC manuals are out of print at the FSF and she plans
> > to print a new edition in this spring.
> 
> Lisa, today we released GCC 3.3 and most of the changes we had planned
> for the GCC manuals are now in; the remaining ones should follow by the
> end of next week or so.  What is your current schedule concerning the
> printing of the book(s)?
> 
> If anybody has outstanding changes which s/he would like to apply to the
> 3.3-branch, especially before the manuals are printed by the FSF, please
> try to get them in ASAP.
> 
> Gerald
> -- 
> Gerald "Jerry"   pfeifer@dbai.tuwien.ac.at   http://www.pfeifer.com/gerald/

-- 

Re: HEADS UP: GCC manual soon to be printed

[Joseph S. Myers]

On Thu, 15 May 2003, Lisa M. Opus Goldstein wrote:

> I will wait until the end of May for the final changes to be added,
> and then put the book into production.  Any remaining typos or
> typsetting issues found along the way will be sent upstream to you
> guys.

Two and a half years ago <http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2000-11/msg00753.html>
RMS said (in response to some questions I asked about the copyright
assignment forms):

#     Does assign.future also cover changes to the GCC manual?
#
# I asked our lawyer about this a month ago, and that is when I wrote
# the text in maintain.texi about the subject.  In the case of the GCC
# manual, since it is published separately as a book, we should get
# separate papers for the manual.
#
# It would have been a good idea for me to have asked about this in the
# past.  I wish I had asked him earlier.

and Gerald replied, with response from RMS
<http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2000-11/msg00872.html>:

#     Ouch. Does that mean that before the next edition of the book someone
#     will have to contact all who have contributed to the manual?
#
# It would be a good idea to do this, yes.  Isn't it safe to assume,
# though, that only contributors to GCC's code have contributed to the
# manual?  That would make a finite set of people to ask, and they could
# be asked easily enough by sending the same message text to each of
# them.

I'm not aware of anything having been done since then [1] about getting
separate forms for the manual signed by contributors.  Was it subsequently
concluded that it wasn't in fact necessary to do this?

(I think the set of people with assignments covering GCC numbered about
600 at that time; there will be more since then; I don't know whether
anything was done though about the suggestion of producing a unified
assignment form for future contributors, covering both the code and the
manual.)

[1] I have asked about whether there was any progress at least once in the
mean time, <http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2002-03/msg01343.html>, not
just now just before the new edition of the manual.

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
jsm28@cam.ac.uk

Re: HEADS UP: GCC manual soon to be printed

[Joseph S. Myers]

On Thu, 15 May 2003, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:

> If anybody has outstanding changes which s/he would like to apply to the
> 3.3-branch, especially before the manuals are printed by the FSF, please
> try to get them in ASAP.

Just before it is finally fixed for printing, someone should make sure
that the last modification dates in the manuals to be printed are up to
date.

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
jsm28@cam.ac.uk

Re: HEADS UP: GCC manual soon to be printed

[Joseph S. Myers]

On Thu, 15 May 2003, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:

> If anybody has outstanding changes which s/he would like to apply to the
> 3.3-branch, especially before the manuals are printed by the FSF, please
> try to get them in ASAP.

I notice that the VMS documentation in the manual still appears very
out-of-date - certainly, it references ancient versions of GAS.  Is there
any chance that the VMS port maintainer could update it before the
printing so it doesn't look quite to out of date in the printed manual?

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
jsm28@cam.ac.uk

Re: HEADS UP: GCC manual soon to be printed

[Douglas B Rupp]

> I notice that the VMS documentation in the manual still appears very
> out-of-date - certainly, it references ancient versions of GAS.  Is there
> any chance that the VMS port maintainer could update it before the
> printing so it doesn't look quite to out of date in the printed manual?

There is no designated VMS port maintainer at this time.  However, fwiw I
think vms.texi should be simply obsoleted since it pertains to the old VAX
port and is mostly inaccurate wrt the current port on Alpha.

Re: HEADS UP: GCC manual soon to be printed

[Joseph S. Myers]

On Wed, 21 May 2003, Douglas B Rupp wrote:

> There is no designated VMS port maintainer at this time.  However, fwiw I
> think vms.texi should be simply obsoleted since it pertains to the old VAX
> port and is mostly inaccurate wrt the current port on Alpha.

In that case, could you submit a patch that removes vms.texi (and the glue 
in gcc.texi that uses it), or, as the case may be, removes from vms.texi 
everything that is irrelevant leaving only anything that still applies to 
the Alpha port?

(All the VMS installation documentation in install-old.texi also needs
removing, but that's a separate issue, and the HTML generation mechanism
means that changes to the install manual are rather more fragile.)

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
jsm28@cam.ac.uk

[PATCH] Remove VMS section in documentation (was Re: HEADS UP: GCC manual soon to be printed)

[Douglas B Rupp]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 446 bytes --]


> In that case, could you submit a patch that removes vms.texi (and the glue
> in gcc.texi that uses it), or, as the case may be, removes from vms.texi
> everything that is irrelevant leaving only anything that still applies to
> the Alpha port?
>

Attached is the simple patch. I am unable to test it due to configuration
problems that I don't have time to sort out right now. It seems safe enough
though. OK to commit in trunk and 3.3 branch?

[-- Attachment #2: novms.diff.txt --]
[-- Type: text/plain, Size: 960 bytes --]

	* doc/gcc.texi: Remove VMS section.
	* doc/vms.texi: Obsolete.


Index: gcc/doc/gcc.texi
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvs/gcc/gcc/gcc/doc/gcc.texi,v
retrieving revision 1.59
diff -u -p -r1.59 gcc.texi
--- gcc/doc/gcc.texi	4 Feb 2003 01:27:45 -0000	1.59
+++ gcc/doc/gcc.texi	23 May 2003 17:34:42 -0000
@@ -153,7 +153,6 @@ Introduction, gccint, GNU Compiler Colle
 * Bugs::            How, why and where to report bugs.
 * Service::         How to find suppliers of support for GCC.
 * Contributing::    How to contribute to testing and developing GCC.
-* VMS::             Using GCC on VMS.
 
 * Funding::         How to help assure funding for free software.
 * GNU Project::     The GNU Project and GNU/Linux.
@@ -178,7 +177,6 @@ Introduction, gccint, GNU Compiler Colle
 @include bugreport.texi
 @include service.texi
 @include contribute.texi
-@include vms.texi
 
 @include funding.texi
 @include gnu.texi

Re: HEADS UP: GCC manual soon to be printed

[Lisa M. Opus Goldstein]

What is the length of this section?  I am much more inclined to cut it
if at all possible.  I am worried about total manuscript length.


-Opus








Joseph S. Myers <jsm28@cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> On Thu, 15 May 2003, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:
> 
> > If anybody has outstanding changes which s/he would like to apply to the
> > 3.3-branch, especially before the manuals are printed by the FSF, please
> > try to get them in ASAP.
> 
> I notice that the VMS documentation in the manual still appears very
> out-of-date - certainly, it references ancient versions of GAS.  Is there
> any chance that the VMS port maintainer could update it before the
> printing so it doesn't look quite to out of date in the printed manual?
> 
> -- 
> Joseph S. Myers
> jsm28@cam.ac.uk

-- 
Lisa M. Goldstein           opus@gnu.org
Managing Editor, GNU Press  www.gnupress.org
Business Manager,           Tel 617-542-5942
Free Software Foundation    Fax 617-542-2652

Re: HEADS UP: GCC manual soon to be printed

[Stephan T. Lavavej]

[Gerald Pfeifer]
> If anybody has outstanding changes which s/he would like to apply to the
> 3.3-branch, especially before the manuals are printed by the FSF, please
> try to get them in ASAP. 

Can the (really) small problems I identified here:
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2003-05/msg01895.html
be fixed in time for the printed manuals?

I would write a patch myself, but I don't know how that process works (even
though I recently learned how to use diff and patch).

Stephan T. Lavavej
http://stl.caltech.edu

Re: HEADS UP: GCC manual soon to be printed

[Simon Law]

On Wed, May 21, 2003 at 02:28:22PM -0700, Stephan T. Lavavej wrote:
> [Gerald Pfeifer]
> > If anybody has outstanding changes which s/he would like to apply to the
> > 3.3-branch, especially before the manuals are printed by the FSF, please
> > try to get them in ASAP. 
> 
> Can the (really) small problems I identified here:
> http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2003-05/msg01895.html
> be fixed in time for the printed manuals?
> 
> I would write a patch myself, but I don't know how that process works (even
> though I recently learned how to use diff and patch).

	I will prepare a patch, which Jim Morrison will forward to the
GCC documentation people.

Simon