Random question for people: how many people out there actually ever look at the VB language specification? The original purpose of writing the language specification was purely for internal use, done so we'd have a reasonably authoritative explanation of the language aside from "whatever the compiler does" and "whatever MSDN happens to say." And to have a place where historical thinking could be preserved for future generations of VB team members, so there'd be some chance in hell that we could avoid making the same mistakes twice. But how useful is it for the public? Not that much, I would imagine, but I'm curious.
There should be a second edition of the 8.0 spec coming out in the next few months. Besides a bunch of corrections, it also cleans up the formatting and also--surprise, surprise--actually ensures that all the examples work and do what the spec says they will do. Up until now, language specifications have been published in Word, but with the new PDF tools that are available for Word, that's an option too. Do people like the Word format? Would you prefer PDF? Or both?
And finally, how tied are people to the structure of the specification? The Everett and Whidbey specifications only added on but didn't change the ordering of existing sections. Orcas will likely do the same. But beyond that, I've been toying with the idea of restructuring the spec a bit to make it a little clearer and put topics that should go together, together. I'm wondering if that would really throw people, or whether people wouldn't mind adapting. Not really a short-term issue, but...