Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 20:36:45 -0800 (PST)
Message-Id: <199802270436.UAA02673@adit.ap.net>
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To: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com
From: Nate Eldredge <eldredge AT ap DOT net>
Subject: Re: Suggestion: Portability section for libc docs
Precedence: bulk

I wrote:
>At 02:51  2/25/1998 +0000, George Foot wrote:
>>As I said, I don't think adding new tokens should be too trivial -- we
>>don't want people doing it willy-nilly.  If a new token is added, all
>>functions that don't mention that token are documented to be unportable to
>>that target.  This could easily be changed, of course, if people don't
>>like it.
>
>IMHO, functions that don't mention a target should just not mention it. I
don't >think that omitting to mention, say, DOS, should result in the text
"Not >portable to DOS". I'd like to propose that we say either "dos"
(portable to >DOS), "~dos" (sort of portable to DOS), or something like
"!dos" (not portable >to DOS), and not mentioning it results in nothing.
Then people would just have >to draw their own conclusions. Alternatively,
to force us to get everything, it >could issue a warning "Token not
mentioned" and/or put "Unknown" in the text.

Just thought of something else: Might it be wise to have a "unique" token
which overrides all others? So for something like
`__djgpp_map_physical_memory' we can write:

@portability unique

and get

Portability: Unique to DJGPP

instead of

Portability: Not ANSI, not POSIX, not DOS, not Unix

If we go with the table format, this should probably print "no" in every
column, so that added targets don't require changes.

Or does someone have another idea?

Nate Eldredge
eldredge AT ap DOT net