Contributing to DUMB

Of course, DUMB being free software, nothing prevents you from maintaining a version of your own and uploading it to FTP sites all over the world without telling me. But let's try to cooperate.

Requirements

If you add new files or change much in existing files, please write a copyright notice at the beginning of the file. I want many people to have copyrights to parts of DUMB. Then no one alone can turn it to a propietary product.

The Free Software Foundation has another approach. They ask people to transfer the copyrights to them. You can transfer the copyrights of your code to FSF if you want. But not to me.

Recommendations

C++ complications

Do not define types inside a struct. If the file is compiled as C++, the nested definition won't be visible outside the struct. So, instead of this:

struct op_node {
   enum operation {
      OP_STATISTICS,
      OP_SECTOR_SIDES,
      OP_OUTPUT_DOOM,
      OP_SET_NAME,
      OP_SET_LONGNAME
   } operation;
   int sector;			/* for OP_SECTOR_SIDES */
   const char *name;	/* for OP_OUTPUT_DOOM, OP_SET_NAME, OP_SET_LONGNAME */
   struct op_node *next;
};

do this:

enum operation {
   OP_STATISTICS,
   OP_SECTOR_SIDES,
   OP_OUTPUT_DOOM,
   OP_SET_NAME,
   OP_SET_LONGNAME
};
struct op_node {
   enum operation operation;
   int sector;			/* for OP_SECTOR_SIDES */
   const char *name;	/* for OP_OUTPUT_DOOM, OP_SET_NAME, OP_SET_LONGNAME */
   struct op_node *next;
};

Using the identifier "operation" for both the member and the type works even in C++.

Do not use the C++ keywords as identifiers: asm, bool, catch, class, const_cast, delete, dynamic_cast, explicit, false, friend, inline, mutable, namespace, new, operator, overload, private, protected, public, reinterpret_cast, static_cast, template, this, throw, true, try, typeid, typename, using, virtual, wchar_t.

Don't use the C++ alternative operators: and, and_eq, bitor, compl, not, not_eq, or, or_eq, xor, xor_eq.

File formats and email attachments

Please compress your contribution with gzip unless it's trivial enough to be included verbatim in email. If you don't have gzip, you can use zip.

If your contribution is less than 500k or so when compressed (it probably is, as dumb-0.12.tar.gz was just 340k :), you can send it to me as an email attachment without warning. If it is bigger than that, please write to me first.

I can decode MIME, BinHex and uuencode formats.

Consequences