Contributing software

[Jeff Kingston]

I'd like to find out what people think about the whole issue of
contributing software to the Lout world.  At present, the only
Lout-related software available on the net (as far as I am aware)
is the Lout distribution itself.  However, I know of several
people who have produced various things related to Lout: one of 
my correspondents has an sgml-to-lout filter, another has a
shell for running Lout repeatedly and massaging the error messages
so that they can be used to direct an editor to jump to the error
point, and so on.

Occasionally I get requests from people to incorporate their
software into the Lout distribution, but I have always declined
to do this so far.  The problem with it from my point of view is
that if I start to accept such contributions, I either have to
accept everything or else set myself up as some kind of referee.
Neither course appeals.

I guess my preferred solution is for people to put up their own
things on the net; then they can look after their own users, do
their own updates, etc.  But there has to be some way for people
to find out what is available, and presumably this mailing list
would be part of the solution of that problem, but exactly how
I'm not sure.

Anyone care to comment?

Jeff Kingston
address@hidden