Re: The --citation changed to refer to a book in a recent release

[Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason]

On Fri, Jan 11, 2019 at 11:35 AM Ole Tange <ole@tange.dk> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Jan 8, 2019 at 9:56 AM Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> 
> wrote:
> >
> > The --citation output now refers to a book instead of the website /
> > documentation itself:
>
> No. It refers to the 2018-book instead of the article from 2011.
> Citation has never referred to neither the website nor the included
> documentation.

I see that now on closer inspection. The URL though was at least to
the official website, i.e. the logical place for "I used this tool",
now it's a URL for a book I have not and don't plan to read. So I'd
never cite it for anything.

> > https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/parallel.git/commit/?id=130e299
> >
> > This has made it useless for people who'd like to cite the tool and its
> > documentation (i.e. man page) but have never / aren't going to read this
> > supplemental documentation.
>
> GNU Parallel has changed a lot since the article was published in
> 2011. The book is a much updated resource compared to the article.
> That is why the citation has changed. The hope is that there will be
> new version of the book every few years, so there will not be a
> difference of 7 years between the referenced article and the actual
> tool used.
>
> My guess is that very few of the users that cited earlier versions had
> read the article (even though both article and book can be read for
> free online). They had gotten the information they needed in different
> ways (man page, tutorial, videos, blog posts, question websites,
> mailinglist, or word of mouth) - and that is completely fine.
>
>
> /Ole