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GNU Texinfo 5.0 Released

Posted by Unknown on from the aged-to-perfection dept.

Four years after the last release, version 5.0 of Texinfo, the GNU documentation language, has been released. The primary highlight is a new implementation of makeinfo info in Perl rather than C. Although slower, the new version offers several advantages: cleaner code using a structured representation of the input document, Unicode support, and saner support for multiple output backends. There are over a dozen other improvements including better formatting of URLs, improved cross-manual references, and a program to convert Perl POD documentation to Texinfo.

8 of 173 comments (clear)

  1. Things you don't hear every day by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Nobody could understand the source code anymore without massive doses of caffeine... ao we decided to rewrite the whole thing in Perl."

    1. Re:Things you don't hear every day by c0lo · · Score: 3, Funny

      "Nobody could understand the source code anymore without massive doses of caffeine... ao we decided to rewrite the whole thing in Perl."

      Oblig xkcd

      --
      Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
  2. Re:Perl hater by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    That high-level C crap is for wannabes, son...real men create their programs in native binary by manipulating the bits on their drive platters with pointy magnets

  3. Re:Perl??? by ls671 · · Score: 2, Funny

    C and shell scripting is good enough for me and it should be for any GNU project. I do not use half-way solutions such as Perl. I use Java when bash and C becomes too messy. The idea is to reduce your inventory to a strict minimum.
     

    --
    Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
  4. This reminds me of a Dilbert strip. by sidragon.net · · Score: 1, Funny

    Let me get this straight. These guys ported and anachronistic piece of software from one dead language to a slightly less dead language, and then bragged about using structured programming techniques as a feature.

    Hang on, I think Scott Adams has something to say about this.

    http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2013-02-11/

  5. Oblig oblig XKCD by swm · · Score: 3, Funny

    Lisp
    http://xkcd.com/224/

  6. Re:Do not want by swillden · · Score: 4, Funny

    I do not have the time, once again, to look up those obscure keyboard commands so that I may navigate laboriously through the documentation.

    What obscure keyboard commands? They're just the keybindings for the help system of the One True Editor. If you are using something inferior and have therefore memorized some truly obscure keyboard commands instead, how is that their fault?

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    Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  7. Re:Do not want by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    What obscure keyboard commands? They're just the keybindings for the help system of the One True Editor.

    You, sir, have no idea what the One True Editor actually is:

    http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.html