Re: patch for gdb.texinfo

[Stan Shebs <shebs at shebs dot cnchost dot com>]

(Hi everybody!)

Dmitry Sivachenko wrote:
> 
> >
> > > -intent is to aid the debugging of @dfn{dynamic arrays}, which cannot be
> > > +intent is to aid the debugging of dynamic arrays, which cannot be
> >
> > Why is it a good idea to remove the @dfn here?
> 
> Because there is no definition of 'dynamic arrays' here in the text.

Which makes sense, although perhaps it would be better to include
a quick definition of dynamic arrays.  The reader may or may not
know what is being referred to here - indeed I'm not entirely sure
myself, although the term seems to be used in a generic sense,
rather than as a reference to a specific language construct.

> > As for the replacements of @code and @samp with @env and @option:
> > please note that this makes the GDB manual incompatible with all
> > versions of Texinfo except the latest v4.0.
> 
> That is true.
> 
> > Are you sure it's a good
> > idea to break back-compatibility for no good reason (since they
> > typeset in the same way)?
> 
> Do you use any new features of whatever OS you use?  This is also
> incompatible with older versions...
> 
> I think we should use new features of texinfo.  May be in future versions
> typeseting @env and @command  will differ from the current behaviour.
> By the way, FreeBSD team already updated texinfo to 4.0 in base distribution.

I disagree here.  We do have to worry about backward compatibility,
just as we had to support K&R compilers for a long time, and just
as we support many old OS versions.  Certainly many GDB users would
be disappointed if we trashed Linux support for any kernel older
than, say, 2.2.5!

In the case at hand, older versions of texinfo will just choke and
stop processing the file, right?  So to forestall many bug reports,
we should stick with an older version.  I would say 3.0, but if
somebody knows of a need for compat with 2.x, speak up now...

                                                Stan
                                                shebs@shebs.cnchost.com