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Major release of the Jargon File

From:  "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>
To:  lwn@lwn.net, editors@linuxtoday.com, editors@newsforge.com
Subject:  Major release of the Jargon File -- 4.4.0, now with cartoons
Date:  Sat, 10 May 2003 20:25:15 -0400
Cc:  jargon-helpers@thyrsus.com

The Jargon File is a central part of the heritage of the Linux and
open-source movements.  As we approach the File's 30th anniversary,
it is my pleasure and honor to bring the hacker community a major new
release, 4.4.0.  It has been made available at:

    http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/

This is a not a mere point release, but a major revision incorporating
weeks of work.  The file masters have been converted from Texinfo to
XML-Docbook; as a result,

* There is a real change-log file; you can see which entries have been 
  added, changed, or deleted in each release since 4.0.0.

* The new File includes cartoons and illustrations.  In addition to
  the Crunchly cartoons from the paper edition (the New Hacker's 
  Dictionary) there are other photographs and illustrations
  of historical and current interest.

There have been many content changes as well:

* The entries have been systematically weeded out with Google
  searches, so the File reflects live usage better than
  ever before.  Over a hundred bogus entries were removed.

* Copies of all old versions still extant are now available in an archive 
  directory, together with the tools I used for reconstructing the
  entry histories.

As usual, many entries have been revised and updated.  Enjoy!
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>



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Major release of the Jargon File

Posted May 18, 2003 3:54 UTC (Sun) by nowster (subscriber, #67) [Link]

I see that the new revision airbrushes certain points of computing history out of the picture, as they're no longer "live usage".

The Jargon File is a documentation of the history of hacking. Just because the technology is no longer current (eg. DEC or card punches) doesn't mean that it's irrelevant or uninteresting.

Why remove the entry for lace card but leave The Story of Mel which talks of drum store?

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