Richard Stallman has posted an updated list of suggested
documentation projects in the GNU task list to the info-gnu
list.
Stallman writes:
“Please see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-doc.html
for an explanation of why free software needs free
documentation.”
Below is Stallman’s complete post.
From rms@gnu.org Wed Nov 4 01:34:13 1998
Date: Sun, 1 Nov 1998 12:50:07 -0500
From: Richard Stallman
To: info-gnu@gnu.org
Subject: Which are the missing manuals?
Resent-Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1998 17:31:27 -0500
Resent-From: info-gnu-request@gnu.org
I would like to update the list of suggested documentation projects
in the GNU task list. I've included the current list below; if you
see anything that ought to be added, please email me the suggestions.
The ultimate goal is to have free manuals for every aspect of the
system; therefore, this list is not confined to software packages that
are GNU software. If a free program is used in the GNU system or in
GNU/Linux systems, and it does not now come with all the free manuals
a user would wish for, then we want to include those missing manuals
in this list.
Please see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-doc.html for an
explanation of why free software needs free documentation.
Here is the existing list; the items are in no particular order.
======================================================================
A unified manual for LateX.
A tutorial introduction to Midnight Commander.
A manual for GNU SQL.
A thorough manual for RCS.
A reference manual for Mach.
A reference manual for the GNU Hurd features in GNU libc.
A manual for writing Hurd servers.
A C reference manual. (RMS made a try at one, which you could start
with).
Reference manuals for C++, Objective C, Pascal, Fortran 77, and Java.
A tutorial manual for the C++ STL (standard template library).
GNU Objective-C Runtime Library Manual; this would be a reference manual
for the runtime library functions, structures, and classes. Some work
has been done on this job.
Manuals for GNUstep: developer tutorial, developer programming manual,
developer reference manual, and user manual.
A manual for Ghostscript.
A manual for TCSH.
A good free reference manual for Perl. The free Perl on-line reference
documentation is good, for what it is--a list of functions and a
description of each--but that is not the same as a reference manual.
(Compare, for example, the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual with the
collection of documentation strings of Emacs Lisp functions.)
A good free Perl language tutorial introduction. The existing Perl
introductions are published with restrictions on copying and
modification, so that they cannot be part of a GNU system.
A manual for PIC (the graphics formatting language).
A book on how GCC works and why various machine descriptions
are written as they are.
A manual for programming applications for X11.
Manuals for various X window managers.
Reference cards for those manuals that don't have them: C
Compiler, Make, Texinfo, Termcap, and maybe the C Library.
Many utilities need documentation, including grep and others.