Appendix P. Revision History

      This document first appeared as a 60-page HOWTO in the late spring
      of 2000. Since then, it has gone through quite a number of updates
      and revisions. This book could not have been written without the
      assistance of the Linux community, and especially of the volunteers
      of the Linux Documentation Project.
    

From thegrendel@theriver.com Sat Jun 10 09:05:33 2000 -0700
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 09:05:28 -0700 (MST)
From: "M. Leo Cooper" <thegrendel@theriver.com>
X-Sender: thegrendel@localhost
To: ldp-discuss@lists.linuxdoc.org
Subject: Permission to submit HOWTO

Dear HOWTO Coordinator,

I am working on and would like to submit to the LDP a HOWTO on the subject
of "Bash Scripting" (shell scripting, using 'bash'). As it happens,
I have been writing this document, off and on, for about the last eight
months or so, and I could produce a first draft in ASCII text format in
a matter of just a few more days.

I began writing this out of frustration at being unable to find a
decent book on shell scripting. I managed to locate some pretty good
articles on various aspects of scripting, but nothing like a complete,
beginning-to-end tutorial.  Well, in keeping with my philosophy, if all
else fails, do it yourself.

As it stands, this proposed "Bash-Scripting HOWTO" would serve as a
combination tutorial and reference, with the heavier emphasis on the
tutorial. It assumes Linux experience, but only a very basic level
of programming skills. Interspersed with the text are 79 illustrative
example scripts of varying complexity, all liberally commented. There
are even exercises for the reader.

At this stage, I'm up to 18,000+ words (124k), and that's over 50 pages of
text (whew!).


I haven't mentioned that I've previously authored an LDP HOWTO, the
"Software-Building HOWTO", which I wrote in Linuxdoc/SGML. I don't know
if I could handle Docbook/SGML, and I'm glad you have volunteers to do
the conversion. You people seem to have gotten on a more organized basis
these last few months. Working with Greg Hankins and Tim Bynum was nice,
but a professional team is even nicer.

Anyhow, please advise.


Mendel Cooper
thegrendel@theriver.com