On Fri, Jan 11, 2019 at 11:35 AM Ole Tange <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Tue, Jan 8, 2019 at 9:56 AM Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > > The --citation output now refers to a book instead of the website / > > documentation itself: > > No. It refers to the 2018-book instead of the article from 2011. > Citation has never referred to neither the website nor the included > documentation.
I see that now on closer inspection. The URL though was at least to the official website, i.e. the logical place for "I used this tool", now it's a URL for a book I have not and don't plan to read. So I'd never cite it for anything. > > https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/parallel.git/commit/?id=130e299 > > > > This has made it useless for people who'd like to cite the tool and its > > documentation (i.e. man page) but have never / aren't going to read this > > supplemental documentation. > > GNU Parallel has changed a lot since the article was published in > 2011. The book is a much updated resource compared to the article. > That is why the citation has changed. The hope is that there will be > new version of the book every few years, so there will not be a > difference of 7 years between the referenced article and the actual > tool used. > > My guess is that very few of the users that cited earlier versions had > read the article (even though both article and book can be read for > free online). They had gotten the information they needed in different > ways (man page, tutorial, videos, blog posts, question websites, > mailinglist, or word of mouth) - and that is completely fine. > > > /Ole
