Re: Recent m4 CVS changes

[Ted Stern]

On 5 Sep 2003, Gary V. Vaughan wrote:
>
> Hi Ted,
>
> Ted Stern wrote:
>> In about May of 2002, I forwarded to Gary some information about the M5
>> project, some code developed by a now-deceased CS professor, Dain Samples,
>> about a decade ago (pre GNU m4).  I notice in recent GNU m4 CVS ChangeLog
>> entries that there has been a flurry of feature addition in June and July.
>> Some of it is reminiscent of the M5 stuff I forwarded.  I was curious
>> whether it was something that you all had been developing independently or
>> whether you were inspired by the ideas in the M5 document -- I'd like to
>> hope so!
>
> Absolutely.  There are some excellent ideas in Prof. Samples papers
> which definitely improve upon the usability of M4.  My current plans
> are to get a new release out the door as soon as possible, and then
> look at enhancing the core of GNU m4 as necessary to support a
> loadable M5 module that implements as much as practicable of M5.

I started reading the m4-discuss list (somebody really needs to update

          http://www.seindal.dk/rene/gnu/lists.htm

by the way) and the cvs update list and I see that you're plugging away
diligently toward that goal.  I'm looking forward to the release.

>
>> In any case, if you haven't done so already, it might be nice to add an
>> acknowledgement of Dain Samples' influence.  Especially since the only
>> other references to M5 that I turned up were in some Microsoft Research
>> papers (who knows what else they do with it?  They certainly don't tell
>> anybody when they're stealing ideas) -- with the recent SCO brouhaha, it
>> couldn't hurt to establish a tie to pre-existing public domain code.
>
> I haven't added any acknowledgements, but will be certain to do so
> well in advance of any release that uses Prof. Sample's work.
>
> Cheers,
>       Gary.

Thanks for the clarifications!

Ted
-- 
 Ted Stern                                 Applications Group
 Cray Inc.                               office: 206-701-2182
 411 First Avenue South, Suite 600         cell: 206-383-1049
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 Frango ut patefaciam -- I break that I may reveal
 (The Paleontological Society motto, equally apropos for debugging)