re: Changes to the FOM -- please add date-of-modification

[David Presberg <David dot Presberg at conexant dot com>]

RE:
 > From: "Martin v. Loewis" <martin@loewis.home.cs.tu-berlin.de>
 > To: gcc@gcc.gnu.org
 > CC: law@cygnus.com
 > Subject: Changes to the FOM
 > Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2000 00:01:00 +0200
 > 
 > I noticed there is a lot of garbage in the FOM. I tried to clean it
 > up, but I can't as I don't have the necessary editing permissions.
     ...

If there is going to be some work done on the "FOM", I would
appreciate someone inserting in either (a) overall options in the FOM
software setup, or (b) on each generated page, some indication as to
the date when the information appearing on that page last was
modified.  In the past I've used the GCC web page collection as a
reference to the innards of GCC releases via a "top-down" approach:
rather than trying to follow all threads of discussion on the mailing
lists, when there was some topic that related to some recent change, I
first went to the FAQ page to see if the text about that or a related
topic had changed, and carefully checked the date-of-modification for
the FAQ page(s).  That timestamp was useful.  I had a back-channel
conversation with Gerald Pfeifer at the time that the GCC FAQ was
changed from hand-composed HTML (and longer pages), to the Faq-O-Matic
CGI-generated database and pages about this lacking in FOM among other
things.

For example, see the following that I picked off my browser today:

[Text extracted from URL  http://gcc.gnu.org/fom_serv/cache/50.html ]

  When will the GCC version 3 be released?

	  There is no firm release date for GCC 3 at this time (May
	  2000). Any number of issues still need to be resolved

	  martin@loewis.home.cs.tu-berlin.de


	  The GCC 3.0 release criteria [ <--a link ] are available. 

	  oliva@lsd.ic.unicamp.br

     ...  ...

  This document is: http://gcc.gnu.org/cgi-bin/fom.cgi?file=50
       [Search]                           [Appearance]
					  This is a Faq-O-Matic 2.709. 
  This FAQ administered by ... 

Note that the "..." in that last line, above, are literal: that is
all the page has on it.  And also note that there is *no* indication
as to the timeliness of the information above (other than that
thoughtfully provided manually by Martin Loewis in the body of his
item).

Please try to once again timestamp FAQ items even if you find you have
to use Faq-O-Matic to maintain the info.

Thanks.

-- Pres

- David L. Presberg, Software Engineer/Tools
- Conexant Systems/Maker Inc., 8 Technology Drive
- Westborough, MA 01581-1756, USA              Phone: (508) 621-0680
- David.Presberg@conexant.com   Nickname: Pres   Fax: (508) 621-0605