Salings and greetutations!              -*-indented-text-*-

Here's a new version of the utilities.

Newest, hottest, latest:

  * Christoph Badura (bad@flatlin.ka.sub.org) has helped a great deal
  with some of the specifics for sa (that damned k*sec statistic) and
  with his patches for SCO unix.

  * Linux folks can use this stuff now -- kernel mods included in the
  file README-LINUX.

  * the ToDo file has things that I'm working on in it...

  * DON'T PANIC if you don't get the right values for AC_MEM, AC_IO,
    and the like.  I haven't patched the configure.in file to
    automatically check for the return type of these items yet.

Things to know:

  * sa is almost finished -- only flags [afmsv] are not implemented.
  The numbers should be right, finally.  Please start hacking on this
  one.  Most likely, the numbers will be very close to your system's
  sa (I hope); if there are slight discrepancies, they can be
  explained via round-off errors.

  * again, please don't redistribute the package.  I don't want buggy,
  non-portable, or incomplete code being sent out.  If someone else
  wants to help test, have them download a virgin distribution from
  alpha.gnu.ai.mit.edu.  Plus -- egg in the face has never bothered
  me, but the FSF wouldn't appreciate it.

  * the intro to the documentation is a joke, if you hadn't figured it
  out.  I don't have anything against Ken & Dennis, though I'm a
  little peeved at AT&T for trying to earn an extra buck by
  over-licensing Unix.  If you can suggest something good to put here,
  please do.  Also, any information about history of the original
  accounting utilities would be welcome.

  * if you run into a bug, please send a "good" bug report -- a
  message that contains detailed instructions that allow me to
  reproduce the bug.

  * if you can make a patch for a particular problem, great!  But if
  you modify more than 10 lines, I need to worry about disclaimers.
  Let's try this route: if you find a bug and report it, I'll try to
  fix the problem first.  If I can't, I'll take a patch.  Plus, I want
  to save you work on your end.

  * straightforward testing: "./configure; make check" and check the
  output files in /tmp (should show times and etc.).  If anybody can
  think of better configuration scripts, please mail me with ideas.
  For sa, there's no testing script yet -- I'll make one for the next
  release.

  * have a look at the documentation in accounting.texi -- it should
  compile fine with makeinfo and the latest version of tex.  Most
  problems and explanations are found there.

  * PLEASE SUGGEST FEATURES THAT YOU WANT!  I realize that the
  standard options aren't great, so I'm looking for suggestions to
  make the output more digestible.  Would anyone be interested in
  scripts/options to produce graphic output (postscript, xplot,
  gnuplot, etc.)?

It's good to know that people are willing to donate their time and
effort to getting the GNU Accounting Utilities up and working on many
machines.  Thanks a lot for the help!

-Noel

Noel Cragg \\ 283 North Main Street \\ Oberlin OH 44074-1119 \\ 216/774-3140
                 noel@cs.oberlin.edu \\ noel@gnu.ai.mit.edu
