Re: Automatic Legalese Generator?

[skud netizen com au]

On Tue, May 30, 2000 at 09:59:55AM +0100, Telsa Gwynne wrote:
> On Mon, May 29, 2000 at 05:57:45PM -0700 or thereabouts, Kenny Graunke wrote:
> > Hello!
> > 
> > I have a suggestion for the new help system - automatic legal blurb adding.
> > Right now, we have to manually put an FDL blurb in every doc. Wouldn't it
> > be easier to have this done automatically? Then, if the blurb needs to
> > change someday, you can update it in one place, instead of in every doc.
> > 
> > Just a thought...
> 
> I like it. 

I've done something similar, by including the relevant license as an
SGML entity.  You just make sure it's at a known location, then do
something like this (excusing the Netizen-specific bits and so on...)

<!DOCTYPE BOOK PUBLIC "-//Netizen//DTD DocBook V3.1-Based Extension V1.0//EN" [
<!entity opl.sgml system "../../general/legal/opl.sgml">
]>

Then wherever you want the license to appear in your SGML, you say:

&opl.sgml


The problem, of course, is making sure that your license is in a known
location and that everyone's view of the world is the same.  I'm not
sufficiently familiar with the Gnome CVS tree to know whether this is
easy, but I'm sure it's possible :)

[ please excuse me if this message is stating the blindingly obvious,
btw... I don't mean to teach y'all to suck eggs, and probably should
have lurked a little longer before mouthing off, but I hope you'll find
the above useful.  By the way, "hi". ]

K.

-- 
Kirrily Robert -- <skud@netizen.com.au> -- http://netizen.com.au/
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