Re: [Bug-gnupress] Shorter To Do List

[Lisa M. Opus Goldstein]

Simon Law <address@hidden> wrote:
> We're really getting close to the printing deadline for the GCC manual.
> Here's my much shorter To Do List.
> 
> 1)   Someone needs to copyedit the text to make sure it is proper
>      Engrish.
> 
> 2)   We generate galley proofs and make sure page breaks happen at sane
>      places.  We fix widows and orphans.  We also need to fix overfull
>      and underfull \hboxes.
> 
> 3)   Send the book to the printers.
> 
> 4)   . . . .


New cover design!  I woke up at 6:00 am today from a bad but true
dream.  The book was about to go to the printers, when I realized that
it didn't have a cover design!

In truth, Etienne Suvasa never created a design for GCC.  That is why
the current manual "Using & Porting GCC" has the general gnu-head logo
on it. [see http://www.gnu.org/doc/book5.html]

I could use the bull & egg one from the GCC web page, but I fear being
flamed and complained about since it did not come form the official
committee. [see http://gcc.gnu.org/]

The other option is the use the letters "GCC" made out of gnus being
twisted into shapes, like the parentheses gnus created for Emacs Lisp.
[see http://www.gnu.org/doc/book4.html] I already had a local artist
create a Gnu in the shape of a "C" for the now-not-to-be-released C
Programming Book.  (I was going for a take-off of the Kernigan and
Ritchie cover.)  I can have the same artist do a "G" shape as well to
spell out "GCC".


What do people think?


> 
> 5)   Profit.


I hope!  These already-existing titles are considered "old", and on
the lower end of the product life cycle.  But they are important to
keep in print.


 
>       As you can see, most of this stuff can be done by anyone with a
> good command of reading.  Please volunteer to make this happen.  Perhaps
> someone wants to head up the copyediting effort and split up the book to
> prevent duplication?


I actually think this is a great idea.  It is much easier to do a
close reading of 50 or so pages than to do the whole book.  A person
could easily get tired and miss something.



>       Finally, there are some things I want to do; but are not
> essential to get the book published.  Not on the critical path are:
> 
> i)   I want to use pdfTeX's features to make the typesetting look better.
>      For reference, Google for "pseudo-hz" and "character protrusion".


How long would this take, if you did want to do it for the published
version?

-Opus




> ii)  Fix monospace font sizes in @smallbook form and feed this into
>      Texinfo..
> 
> iii) Rewrite the font handling support and feed it directly into Texinfo.
> 
> Simon
> 
> 
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-- 
Lisa M. Goldstein           address@hidden
Managing Editor, GNU Press  www.gnupress.org
Business Manager,           Tel 617-542-5942
Free Software Foundation    Fax 617-542-2652