Re: who wrote the manual?

[Neil Jerram <neil@ossau.uklinux.net>]

Andy Wingo <wingo@pobox.com> writes:

>     Developers with the most changed lines
>     Neil Jerram               100687 (36.2%)

Quick, publish now before that changes!  :-)

> Assuming that changed lines is the real measure of committing to the
> manual, we can fairly say that Neil wrote the manual, with important
> contributions from Marius on down. If we place the cutoff at 1% (and
> that's totally arbitrary), we can mention 8 more names, which is plenty
> for a preface, no?

Seriously, this is a hard question.  Although Marius and I have written
a lot of new material, I'd say that our percentages are over-represented
because of the amount of large scale reorganization that we've done.  (I
believe that if you just move 100 lines from A to B, Git will count that
as 100 additions and 100 deletions.)

Also supporting that, there was a great deal of manual already in
existence when I first started contributing to it (around 1998).

That then means that the top contributions are not as dominant as they
first look, and so maybe it's less fair to exclude people below some
arbitrary cutoff.  In any case, perhaps we could list all of those names
in an Acknowledgements section, even if we decide to have a limited
subset upfront.

> But where is Mark Galassi in all of that, I wonder...

I'm afraid I don't know.  Although I'm familiar with his name, I believe
his main involvement was before my time.  I've internalised the text you
quoted about Mark writing the manual originally, and surely there must
be some substance to it - but I don't have more detail than that.

But I have a feeling (somehow) that Mark still follows the list
occasionally - so hopefully he may respond himself.

Regards,
        Neil