Re: Copyright notices on manuals.

[Eric Baudais <baudais okstate edu>]

Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> 
> I was browsing on the airplane the documentation for some GNOME
> application, I do forget which.  But the first thing I saw, was
> something like:

We need to know which application and the version of the app this is in
before any changes can even be thought of, at this time.  I would also
email the author of the doc so he/she knows about it, cause they will be
fixing it.

Also, if you are using a 1.2.0 package where a 1.2.1 package is
available, you need to get the 1.2.1 package.  Some 1.2.0 packages had
the docs badly messed up, which was corrected in 1.2.1. :)
 
>         XXXXX
>         (C) Documentation Person name.
> 
>         Change Entry 1
>         Change Entry 2
>         Change Entry 3
>         Change Entry 4
>         Change Entry 5
>         Change Entry 16
> 
> Picture this on the screen.  No information at all but pure metadata
> on the document.  To make things worse, it looks as if the
> applications was done by "Documentation Person Name" rather than the
> actual author of the code.

There isn't a good solution to the copyright at the top of the doc. 
Yes, it can look like that the doc author wrote the app, but the wording
should provide the reader with some clue, "(c)2000 by Doc Author."  I
think the word "by" hints that the document is by the author and not the
whole app.  Also, the about box has the app author as well as the author
section in the doc.  I, personally, believe that this is enough to state
that the app is written by the app author and the docs are written by
the doc author.

If you have a better way to do this, I would appreciate any comments or
suggestions you have.
 
> So we like need to fix this.

Yes, we do.
 
Eric Baudais