Hi Mark,
It has been several months since we last "spoke" via e-mail. I wanted to let
you know what has been going on with the ThoutReaderT.
Perhaps the most significant change is that the ThoutReaderT has been re-licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) Version 2, June 1991, ensuring broader acceptance and future development of the project. We are now in FULL compliance with OSI standards. Feedback from the PHP community influenced this decision and I must say we really feel good about it.
I have just tried out your "php4 manual english" as you call it on your website. I must say, I am quite disappointed because of some significant problems. First I tried to inform you about a few things before, but it seems that it had no effect:
1. There is *no software* named php4. Such software does not exist.
2. We might talk about PHP 4 (note the capital PHP and the
space between the name and the number). But there is still no
PHP 4 as is, there are different versions, which have different
documented behaviours and fetaures. 3. The manual is not for PHP 4, it is not for PHP 5 and it is not
for PHP 3 either. Our manual contains information for all these
major versions, and specific notes for specific subversions. Like if
you go to http://php.net/file_get_contents, you will get
documentation for a function, which is available for
PHP 4 >= 4.3.0 and PHP 5. It is not available for PHP 4 in
general, so its documentation does not apply for PHP versions
before 4.3.0. Also you will be able to find notes applicable
for the following versions respectively: - IIS note for 4.3.7 and above,
- context support for 5.0.0 and above
- offset support for 5.1.0 and aboveTo summarize: you should not include the version number in the manual name, nor you should use small letters for the PHP name. We document all PHP versions possible in a single document and we also document versions which are not available yet (see 5.1.0 above). There is a reason we call the document "PHP Manual", and it is logical that others call their copies the same.
Also our manual is getting better and better and getting more content day by day. So the manual someone dowloads today might just need an update two months from now. This is why we include a build date in all of our downloadables. You don't seem to have this build date in the viewable part of the file, and/or the downloadble filename, so it is hard to tell, how old the document one gets from you is. Since our manual users update their copies periodically, if you would like to have success with your edition, you should have this option too.
And last, but absolutely not least, comes what I was definitely disappointed about. You worked hard to find an acceptable license, and was aware of licensing problems with the reader. But in your PHP manual, THERE IS NO AUTHOR LIST AND NO COPYRIGHT INFORMATION! Forgive me for shouting. But YOU COMPLETELY REMOVED ALL CREDIT AND LEGAL INFORMATION FROM THE DOCUMENT! Yes, there is an appendix which you left untouched and which is the direct copy of the license we built our license on, but in its generality it is far from being our copyright statement, and very far from being our author and contributor list. The fact that your reader is now available under the GNU GPL 2 license does not make our hearts warm if you remove our legal notes and the names of those, who have done much for this document to be as it is today.
I think you will be able to understand that it is not possible to even think about endorsing this edition of our document at this stage.
Ps. documentation list also cc-ed.
Gabor Hojtsy - PHP Documentation Editor
