Re: Do we really need a CPP manual?

[Joseph Myers <joseph at codesourcery dot com>]

On Thu, 15 Dec 2016, Sandra Loosemore wrote:

> Looking at the structure of the whole manual, though, I see that most of 
> it is in fact a tutorial on how to use the preprocessor language, like 
> you would find in a C programming book.  Is this a useful thing for us 
> to be providing? Offhand I am not sure how up-to-date this material is 
> or how much of a maintenance burden it is, but it seems peculiar to be 
> providing such extensive introductory material on the preprocessor when 
> we don't do that for the C or C++ languages; we assume that people 
> already know how to program.

There's a "GNU C Reference Manual" for the C language; I've no idea if 
it's any good.

https://www.gnu.org/software/gnu-c-manual/

It says "Although normally described in a C language manual, the GNU C 
preprocessor has been thoroughly documented in The C Preprocessor, a 
separate manual which covers preprocessing for C, C++, and Objective-C 
programs, so it is not included here.".

So that manual might be a plausible place for documentation of the 
preprocessor language as a whole (having excluded such documentation on 
the basis of it being covered in the CPP manual), although since it's 
strictly a reference that doesn't answer what to do with tutorial content.

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com