Last updated 25 November 1997

This directory contains drafts of the forthcoming second edition of
"The Complete FreeBSD".  This book is copyright, and the drafts are
available for review only.  In particular, please be warned:

0.  Chapters marked '2nd edition' should be perfect.  Ignore any
    dementi in the rest of this section: if you find *anything* you
    don't like, please tell me immediately.

1.  Some of the drafts are of *very* rough quality.  They're snapshots
    of my work, and may be incomplete, incomprehensible, or just plain
    wrong.  See the file STATUS for the current status of each
    chapter.

2.  I will replace individual parts of the drafts when I feel like it.

3.  These drafts are intended for the use of a small group of people
    who have been informed about them.  If you come across them by
    chance, please contact me (grog@lemis.com) first before picking
    them up.

3.  I expect feedback from anybody who takes one of these drafts.

4.  These drafts will contain information which is not intended for
    publication, including copies of mail messages and excerpts from
    the online handbook.  If you find these, it's a clear sign "work
    in progress".  Don't even bother to review the contents.

How to give feedback
--------------------

1.  These files and their page numbers change constantly.  Even the
    chapter numbers will change often enough, so chapter and page
    numbers don't help much.  When sending in review comments, please
    tell me at least the *name* of the chapter (not the number), the
    RCS version number you have (at the bottom of each page of the
    individual chapters) and the section heading.

2.  If you can, reply by mail using the .txt version of the file as
    the basis of the reply.  Remove any unnecessary text when doing
    so.

3.  There are some things that you don't need to comment on.  The
    current drafts will have a number of empty references (like "see
    page ."  or "on page ******").  Some of these are deliberate: they
    refer to man pages which I'm not formatting during the drafts, so
    they show up as empty.  Others refer to sections that haven't been
    written yet.  In all cases, the build process flags these
    omissions, so you don't need to tell me.

4.  You'll occasionally come across things like "XXX fix this".
    This is a convention taken from programming.  I use the editor to
    look for these texts when I'm cleaning up, so you don't need to
    comment on them either.

5.  You may find bits of mail messages or similar texts in the draft.
    This is a sure sign that you're looking at stuff I haven't got
    round to writing yet.  Don't comment, don't continue: it's not
    written, and the mail messages are just for me to remember what I
    should be writing.


Where to get the files:
-----------------------

All the files are in the directory ftp://ftp.lemis.com/pub/.cfbsd.
You can't read this directory, so you'll have to take my word for it.

What's in these directories:
----------------------------

STATUS	       current status of the chapters
PRINTING       suggestions on how to print the data (PostScript)
book.ps.gz     The complete book, about 1800 pages.
book-without-man-pages.ps.gz
	       The book without man pages, about 600 pages.
ps/book.ps.gz  The whole book.  It may or may not contain about 1000
	       pages of man pages
ps/[0-9]*.gz   Individual chapters in PostScript.  The number is the
	       chapter number, and should correspond to the number in
	       STATUS
ps/[A-Z]*.gz   Appendixes in PostScript
ps/preface.ps.gz  Preface
ps/toc.ps.gz   Table of contents
txt/*	       The same files as in ps (with the exception of the
	       complete book).  You can use these files for returning
	       comments; they probably won't give you enough
	       information to understand the text by themselves.
errata	       Errata for *first* edition.  Not of interest to you.
config/	       Various configuration files

Greg Lehey
grog@lemis.com
