A lot of questions (good!) --we answer at least some of them, rest will come later:

a. I tried to use the 1.14.2 version with lpdoc 3 So I abandoned 1.14 and downloaded the 1.15 RPM and installed it on a

Well done. Since 1.14 is now a few months old, at this point it is indeed better to go with the current snapshot (1.15.0, r14751 or later). We have fixed a lot of the issues that people have pointed out since 1.14.0 and we are getting it now ready for a 1.16 stable release.

fresh Linux system using the command: rpm -Uvh The installation worked fine! Opening a .pl file with emacs showed the full Ciao menus (including lpdoc menu items). But I am mystified why? I did nothing to /etc/profile or ~/.profile to call the DOT files or to ~/.emacs to load the ciao .el files but they work. Why do they work?

Since this type of installation (rpm) is system wide the installation modifies the system-wide emacs defaults, so that any user will have emacs correctly configured for using Ciao. This is similar to what some other emacs interfaces do.

What does not work is attempts to call lpdoc. info. I checked the main info/dir (/usr/share/info/dir) and there was an entry for Ciao but not for lpdoc. This may be because lpdoc has been folded into the ciao info file.

No, it is still a separate manual. We tried (with the latest snapshot, 1.15.0 14751) on a fresh openSUSE 12.1 and it worked fine, producing the following two entries:

Ciao System Manuals * ciao-1.15.0: (ciao-1.15.0). The Ciao System (version 1.15 of 2011/7/8) * lpdoc-3.0.0: (lpdoc-3.0.0). The lpdoc Documentation Generator (version 3.0 of 2011/7/7)

and both are in /usr/share/info. It may be a glitch in a particular night build (perhaps the lpdoc manual was not generated due to some error). Please try with the current snapshot.

From the command line, the command: info lpdoc produces a man file! Is this expected behaviour?

Yes, this is standard info behaviour: if an info file is not found for a command and a man file exists then the man file is shown.

The installation Ciao leaves simple "stub" man files for the main Ciao command line tools that point to the info files. Since the lpdoc info file was not installed the info command found the small lpdoc man file.

Regarding lpdoc, the easiest way to get started is to open a .pl file in emacs and push the "generate documentation for the buffer" button or menu entry (you may need to do it twice the first time). This will generate by default documentation in html. Pushing the "view documentation..." button opens the generated documentation in a browser.

Assertions can be used to easily produce richer documentation. Here is a very simple example (see the system libraries for extensive examples):

:- module(_,_,[assertions]).

:- pred p/1 => int # "Returns a 1".

p(1).

Will continue with the other questions.

Manuel H