Anyone want to do a Compilers Annual?

At the end of 1990, I made up a printed version of the articles posted to
comp.compilers during that year. The articles are organized by topic and
thread, and there's indexes by title, author, and keyword. You can still
get copies if you want them; see the message about it posted on the first
of each month.


The printed version was reasonably well received, but I haven't done any
subsequent editions because, basically, I don't have the time to do it.
Would someone else want to be the editor instead?


It's partly an editorial job and partly a job of database publishing. In
the 1990 edition, I printed each article just as it appeared on-line, in a
typewriter face, two 80-character columns per page. I have a bunch of
shell and awk scripts that, with considerable human help, ran everything
through troff to create the book.


That's not feasible for more recent years, since message volume has
increased greatly and a book of 1993 messages in the same format would be
well over 1000 pages. If the articles are typeset, they are considerably
more compact as well as easier to read, but that means someone has to go
through, read them, and put in formatting codes for troff or whatever
other package (TeX perhaps) would be used.


The book's editor is paid mostly in glory. This is a shoestring project,
and I can't afford to hire anyone, though I could probably manage to pay a
small royalty per book as the books are sold. (Before you accuse me of
being a greedhead, the time I spent on the 1990 book probably paid me
about 90 cents per hour, and I don't have an employer to subsidize it.)


If there's anyone out there who wants to take on this project, please let
me know. There's no compilation copyright on comp.compilers, so anyone
who wants to do something like this on his own is equally welcome to do
so.


Regards,
John Levine, comp.compilers moderator
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