Re: document 3.4 changes

[Gerald Pfeifer <gerald at pfeifer dot com>]

On Wed, 13 Aug 2003, Nathan Sidwell wrote:
> here is a patch to document some 3.4 changes. I've folded in
> those changes described in cp/NEWS, as well as augmenting the gcov
> information.

This looks good, in principle, thanks!  Just a few notes below, plus
please also consider Gaby's comments.

> It occurs to me that we should remove cp/NEWS - no point duplicating
> things.

I think that indeed it's much better to have a single place where changes
are documented, and that cannot really be cp/NEWS (not the least because
HTML or texinfo can be converted to plain text, but not the other way
around).

May I suggest that for now you only _migrate_ changes from cp/NEWS to
gcc-3.4/changes.html (that is, remove everything that your patch adds
to gcc-3.4/changes.html from cp/NEWS) and add a reference from cp/NEWS
to the web page?

> ok?

Yes, modulo the minor comments below, and thanks for tackling this!

+       <li>Coverage file format has been redesigned.
+       <li>The <code>gcov</code> coverage tool has been improved.

Please add </li> at the end of all list items.  Do we miss a "The" at
the beginning of the first entry above?  For program names such as gcov,
I would omit the <code>...</code> markup.

+     <li>You must now use the `typename' and `template' keywords to

For code (fragments) like the two above, I suggest to use <code>...</code>.
IIRC, Joseph had strong arguments against TeX quotes in web pages, so I
suggest to simply omit the quotes or use double quotes or single quotes
instead.

+         You must explicitly qualify the name. Here is the corrected
+         definition of <code>C&lt;T&gt;::g</code>,

<p>...</p>?

+     <li>When -pedantic is used, G++ now issues errors about spurious
+ 	semicolons. For example,
+         <pre>
+         namespace N {}; // Invalid semicolon.
+         void f() {}; // Invalid semicolon.</pre>

Should G++ really issue an error, and not a warning? (Cf. the current
discussion on the gcc list.)

!     <li>You must use "template &lt;&gt;" to introduce template

<code>template...</code>

! 	This behavior is not mandated by the standard. Now G++ issues
!         an error about this code.  To avoid the error, you must move
!         the declaration of `g' before the declaration of  `f'.  The
!  	default arguments for `g' must be visible at the point where
!         it is called.

Please use <code>g</code> and <code>f</code>.

Gerald