🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4gsee2$4r5@solutions.solon.com>,
Peter Seebach <seebs@solutions.solon.com> wrote:
:The very latest GNU coding standard says:

[arrogant quote snipped]

:Please take the time to let "gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu" know how clever and informed
:they appear to be in the eyes of the C coding community.
:
:Examples of programs and platforms they haven't worked well on because they
:made these assumptions would be great, especially if it's GNU software, and
:the porting effort is non-trivial.

I once thought I might like to make GNU's "diff" work on my 16-bit
PC compiler (wanting to modify it to deal with C tokens rather than
words/lines) but the code turned out to be so hopeless I gave up
quickly.  Somebody told me that that code is better now, but I've
never made another effort to get it.

What I wanted to do was make
	int main(void) {return 0;}
match
	int main(void)
	{
		return 0;
	}
for example, in order to locate "real" differences.

I had a 32-bit compiler at work and a 16-bit compiler at home, and
was unwilling to use work resources to do this.

:Similarly, you might mention to bug-bash@prep.ai.mit.edu that it is
:mind-numbingly dumb that libreadline uses varargs, but not stdarg.  What does
:it do when there is no varargs either?  It declares 3 arguments and just passes
:all three on to v*printf, figuring that this will probably work.
:
:The FSF is an influential source of code, and should be gently nudged away
:from the incomprehensibly stupid.
:
:So, any one else got favorite examples of incomprehensible bad ideas
:mysteriously cropping up in otherwise sane code?

This isn't code, but may be even worse.  It's from the gcc man page:

     If we find that the things in this man page that are out  of
     date cause significant confusion or complaints, we will stop
     distributing the man page.  The  alternative,  updating  the
     man page when we update the Info file, is impossible because
     the rest of the work of maintaining GNU CC leaves us no time
     for that.  The GNU project regards man pages as obsolete and
     should not let them take time away from other things.

     For complete and current documentation, refer  to  the  Info
     file  `gcc' or the manual Using and Porting GNU CC (for ver-
     sion 2.0).  Both are  made  from  the  Texinfo  source  file
     gcc.texinfo.

Of course, just try and find this "Info file" if you are a user of,
rather than the installer of, gcc.

Sounds to me like the "WHAT! You want me to TELL you how to use
my code?  That's YOUR problem!" syndrome.  "I'm too busy to
document it.  I need my time to write more undocumented code!"

Just what makes man pages "obsolete?"  This declaration?  What's the
replacement to be?  Every vendor coming up with a secretly named
documentation file that's hidden somewhere differently?

Seems that FSF wants to get rid of the consistency of "man foo" to find
out about "foo".

Sorry, perhaps off-topic, but you brought up the FSF.  :-)

Cheers,
Stan.
--
Stan Ryckman  (stanr@tiac.net) (new e-mail address)