README

$Id: README,v 1.5 2014/11/13 17:07:59 karl Exp $
This is the README file for the GNU (free documentation) edition of the
book TeX for the Impatient, released under the GNU Free Documentation
License.  (This README file itself is public domain.)

Primary distribution point: ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/teximpatient/
 automatic redirection: http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/teximpatient
 list of mirrors for manual selection: http://www.gnu.org/prep/ftp.html

Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/teximpatient/

Development sources, etc.: http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/teximpatient/

Information about the free edition is included at the end of the preface
and on the copyright page.

A French translation is included in the distribution,
and a Chinese translation is at https://bitbucket.org/zohooo/impatient
(with PDF at
http://zoho.is-programmer.com/user_files/zoho/epics/tex-impatient-cn.pdf).

Original high-resolution scans of the artwork are available from
http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/teximpatient/artwork.  Reduced-size bitmaps are
in the artwork/ subdirectory here.


Some random thoughts for people thinking of working with the source:

- See errata.future for some relatively small ideas for enhancements.

- You may want to translate the source into some more standard
format, such as Texinfo; we used many homegrown macros mostly to make
typing and markup easier.

- You may also want to redo the index creation to use makeindex or some
other standard program, instead of the homegrown Icon programs (or else
they need to be fixed; right now somehow the + characters used for
spaces in book.idx are preserved in book.sdx, which is wrong).  Until
the index can be easily regenerated, the page breaks can't change
without the index becoming useless.

- Printing the GFDL required many kludges, a true Eplain-compatible
version is needed (which in turn would require using the current eplain
to print the book).

Happy TeXing.