Re: GCC works.... no

[Michal Jaegermann <michal ellpspace math ualberta ca>]

Wes Bauske wrote:
> 
> Michal Jaegermann wrote:
> > 
> > Wes Bauske wrote:
> > >
> > > A quick search on Altavista says makeinfo is
> > > some sort of TeX utility.
> > 
> > Not really.  This is a utility which writes info files (those
> > in your /usr/info/) from 'texinfo' sources.
> 
> Are you sure that package is not a derivative of the Knuth
> stuff?

Yes, I am sure.

$ makeinfo --version
makeinfo (GNU texinfo 3.12) 1.68
Copyright (C) 1998 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
There is NO warranty.  You may redistribute this software
under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
For more information about these matters, see the files named COPYING.

Look at sources anyway.  A companion program 'texindex', used for
an automatic index generation for info files, does not have anything
to do with Knuth as well.

> His SW is for documentation.

Eh?  TeX is for typesetting.  You can typeset documentation, 
and many other things, but this does not make them one.

> The very name suggests
> it is a derivative.

makeinfo?

> Also, if TeX accepts it, it  must be 
> a derivative.

TeX, with a proper set of macros - also called 'texinfo' - accepts as an
input source files writen in '.texi' markup.  This markup and macros
were written by FSF in order to use TeX as a typesetting backend
for GNU documentation.

TeX will also accept as its input (with LaTeX macros and one extra
package) files written in HTML markup, or at least in some sane subset
of it.  By the argument above HTML has to be a TeX derivative, right?
And pretty soon we will extend that reasoning to XML.  Actually XML
input is easier to parse in TeX then HTML as closing tags in XML are not
optional.

Anyway, this has really not much to do with Alpha.

  Michal