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This directory contains a draft of the user documentation for Gofer.
More precisely, the files in this directory are as follows:

	Readme		this file
	hype		a summary of the main features of Gofer
	ch*, appx_*	individual chapters and appendices for the
			main Gofer user manual (Gofer version 2.20)
			(126 pages)
	release.221	release notes for Gofer 2.21  (21 pages)
	release.228	release notes for Gofer 2.28  (49 pages)
        release.230     release notes for Gofer 2.30a (11 pages)
	goferdoc.tex	Jeroen Fokker's LaTeX version of the main
			Gofer user manual.

Several people have contributed man pages for Gofer:

	gofer.1		by Gary Leavens
	bowen.1		by Jonathan Bowen
	jeroen.1	by Jeroen Fokker

Feel free to use which ever one you prefer!

Some of the information in the earlier documentation is rather out
of date.  You have been warned!!!

Given the number of pages involved, you will probably want to be
selective about what you read and, in the interests of all of those
poor trees, selective about what you print -- particularly bearing in
mind the fact that this is only a draft and likely to change!  Another
point worth mentioning is that the files are just plain ASCII text
files -- they can be printed out without problem on a dot matrix
printer ...

Those of you with fancy printers and document preparation software may
be dissappointed that I haven't used anything more than ASCII text to
produce these documents.  The simple reason for this is that ASCII is
the only format that I can reasonably guarantee will be available on
all of the machines on which Gofer is used.

Entries marked with a `+' in the list below are likely to be of most
interest to those who are already familiar with Orwell.

These files may contain many errors; I would be grateful for any
corrections or suggestions!

    ch00     Title and contents pages

    ch01     INTRODUCTION
    ch02     BACKGROUND AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  + ch03     STARTING GOFER
    ch04     USING GOFER - A BASIC INTRODUCTION
    ch05     STANDARD AND USER-DEFINED FUNCTIONS
    ch06     FUNCTION NAMES - IDENTIFIERS AND OPERATORS
    ch07     BUILT-IN TYPES
    ch08     ERRORS
    ch09     MORE ABOUT VALUE DECLARATIONS
  + ch10     INCREASING YOUR POWER OF EXPRESSION
    ch11     USER-DEFINED DATATYPES AND TYPE SYNONYMS
  + ch12     DIALOGUES: INPUT AND OUTPUT
    ch13     LAYOUT
  + ch14     OVERLOADING IN GOFER

  + appx_a   SUMMARY OF GRAMMAR
  + appx_b   CONTENTS OF STANDARD PRELUDE
  + appx_c   RELATIONSHIP WITH HASKELL 1.1
  + appx_d   USING GOFER WITH BIRD+WADLER
    appx_e   PRIMITIVES
  + appx_f   INTERPRETER COMMAND SUMMARY
    appx_g   BIBLIOGRAPHY

Each file contains one or more pages of plain ASCII text.
Each page is exactly 66 lines long.

If the format of these files is unsuitable for your printer, you may
like to get hold of a copy of the source code and page formatter from
which these documents were produced.  These should be available from
the same place that you obtained the files in this directory.

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