Re: patch for gdb.texinfo

[Dmitry Sivachenko <dima at Chg dot RU>]

> (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.

Yes, I agree, but don't feel myself in English so well to do it without
grammar mistakes, sorry...   :)

>
> > > 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!

Well, sounds reasonable.

>
> 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...
>

--dima