dsill@RELAY-NSWC.NAVY.MIL (Dave Sill) (12/23/88)
I know, I know, you're all saying to yourselves "Not again, he just posted one of those." Please bear with me. I wasn't really pleased with way I was doing the directory before. I just had too much information to try to squeeze into 80 columns. I had originally wanted to have date field, but there just wasn't enough room. I was getting fed up with having to leave info out and abbreviating all over the place. The last straw, though, was a letter from Mark Ardis (thanks Mark) that suggested moving the description into the first 80 columns since it's more frequently used than the author or address. He also suggested adding a date field. So I gave it some thought and decided to totally rework the whole thing. I figured the most flexible and easiest to maintain approach would be to put the info in a flat database and use something like awk to generate a readable report. So that's what I did. The database consists of newline separated records with vertical-bar separated fields. I wrote a simple awk/shell script to generate the Directory in the new format. My plans are to distribute the script, database, and directory once now, and to periodically send out updated copies of the datafile. That will minimize the amount of net traffic and allow you to fiddle around with the format script if you don't like my layout or perhaps write other scripts or elisp functions to work with the database. The database now contains two new fields: date and version. Date is either the date of last modification as given in the code or the date it was posted. The version is, of course, the version of the code as listed by the author. Which reminds me... I'd like to make a request of contributors to the pool of free elisp. It would be very helpful to all if you'd put a short header at the beginning of any code you produce, not matter how small, simple, or obvious you think it is. Such a header should contain: Name: the name of your product Author: your name and net address and/or snail address Date: date of release or last modification Version: major version number and patch level Description: what it does and any other info As always, I'm open to suggestions. And, please, keep that code a comin'!
wjc@ho5cad.ATT.COM (Bill Carpenter) (12/29/88)
In article <33803@bbn.COM> dsill@RELAY-NSWC.NAVY.MIL (Dave Sill) writes: > I'd like to make a request of contributors to the pool of free elisp. > It would be very helpful to all if you'd put a short header at the > beginning of any code you produce, not matter how small, simple, or > obvious you think it is. Such a header should contain: > > Name: the name of your product > Author: your name and net address and/or snail address > Date: date of release or last modification > Version: major version number and patch level > Description: what it does and any other info I'd like to suggest one elaboration. For "name", please use the name of the file where you imagine it ought to reside. As an unofficial keeper of things locally, I often grab what look like useful items even if I figure I won't use them personally. If they don't have a suggested filename, I make one up. The only trouble is that if updates come in or if the package becomes part of the official GNUemacs distribution, I might not be alert enough to realize it's something I already have someplace. Of course, this leaves lots of litter around in my local elisp directory. Here are some further nice things about filenames: 1. Avoid filenames the same as those already under $GNU/lisp, even if you intend your stuff as a complete replacement. Since I let others fish around in my local elisp directory, I'd prefer to not surprise them by pre-empting any standard stuff. 2. Just like $GNU/lisp, please use filenames that are 13 or fewer characters when you include the ".el". More than once yours truly has zapped the source file by byte-compiling something that happened to already be 14 characters. Sure made me feel smart. Thanks a heap, and thanks for the heaps (of elisp)! -- -- Bill Carpenter att!ho5cad!wjc or attmail!bill