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Re: Preprocessor question...


> Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 00:58:34 +0000 (GMT)
> From: "Joseph S. Myers" <jsm28@cam.ac.uk>
> 
> If you didn't find this in the manual, could you let us know how we might
> improve the manual so that it would have been easier to find this
> information?

I'm not the original poster, but one way of making this easier to find
is to index it.  When an issue is closely related to an error message,
the best index entry should be the error message itself.  In this
case, the error message:

    test.c: In function `main':
    test.c:8: missing white space after number `0x0E'

suggests the following index entry:

  @cindex missing white space after number

Then the user can simply press `i' in Info, type the error message
text, or some part of it, and get directly to the right place.

I tried the manual in the latest official release of GCC (2.95.2), but
couldn't find such an index entry.  The closest one is "@cindex
whitespace", but it points to a different location.

Btw, one of my gripes about the GCC docs is that indexing needs lots
of work.  Even the command-line options aren't indexed; try "i gstabs"
or "i fomit-frame-pointer" inside Info, for example.

Without a good index, it is next to impossible to use the manual as a
reference material.

Unfortunately, I'm involved in too many GNU projects to find time to
add indexing to the GCC manual.  I hope someone is working on this, or
will in the future.


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