V.E.R.A. is a free list of acronyms all of which are used in the field of computing.
V.E.R.A. is primarily meant to be used as an online reference, although some efforts have been taken to make its TeX output looking acceptable. However I doubt that somebody would like to print it. The original release compiled to 250 pages.
This edition is a special contribution to the GNU project similar to the version 4.1 of V.E.R.A. It contains approximately 7000 acronyms.
The idea to make V.E.R.A. available in Texinfo fomat came after reading two other Info files both of which are available on the Internet, the Standards and the Languages file, both dealing with antique DEC mainframe environments and both distributed stand-alone; that is, both are not serving as a software manual like most of Texinfo files. I thought it would be very handy to have a list of acronyms available while using Emacs.
It may be considered only a very little contribution. However I make it to express my appreciation for the GNU project and its philosophy. This project does not only make software available free to everyone, it also seems that it sets the only standard `everyone' supports nowadays.
I started V.E.R.A. around easter 1993. The ASCII version is being posted to the German=speaking newsgroups z-netz.alt.listen and de.etc.lists every three months. It is not being posted to an international newsgroup, because the introduction as well as many internal references are only available in German.
Please note that the original version of V.E.R.A. is not related to the to the Free Software Foundation or the GNU project at all.
The list is far from being complete as dozens of new acronyms evolve every month. Also I am not an every day Unix user, so I am pretty sure that a lot of acronyms from the Unix world are missing. The same is true for the Apple world. Please don't be angry if your field of computing seems little or not represented at all. Instead please consider contributeing the missing acronyms to let other people know what you know.
The shift from the original format of V.E.R.A. to Texinfo format took a whole week. Please forgive any errors which still remain. For hints how to submit corrections or to report bugs, please see section Release notes and other useful information.
For a more in-depth discussion of some of the more common acronyms contained in this document you, may want to consider visiting the Free Online Dictionary of Computing (FOLDOC), at least if you have access to the World Wide Web. It can be found at http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc (as of June 1997).
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