Re: Proper use of FDL

[Ali Abdin <aliabdin aucegypt edu>]

* Dan Mueth (d-mueth uchicago edu) wrote at 02:23 on 22/09/00:
> 
> On Thu, 21 Sep 2000, John Fleck wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, Sep 21, 2000 at 01:01:13AM -0500, Dan Mueth wrote:
> > > 
> > > Hi all,
> > > 
> > > We discussed using the FDL in documents which are shipped as part of GNOME
> > > previously on this list, although we did not quite finish that discussion
> > > or update the templates.  I believe the remaining questions are "where do
> > > we put the fdl.sgml file so other documents can link to it?" and "what is
> > > the URL we should use in our link?".  I believe the suggested answers were
> > > "gnome-libs, which installs it in $PREFIX/gnome/help/fdl" and
> > > "gnome-help:fdl". Does this sound good to everybody?  If so, we can update
> > > the templates and ask John Fleck to write up a summary of what needs to be
> > > changed.  If not, let's resolve this soon.
> > > 
> > 
> > Here is how I have been doing it in the documents I'm testing with
> > Nautilus:
> > 
> >    Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
> >    document under the terms of the <ulink type="help"
> >    url="gnome-help:fdl"><citetitle>GNU Free Documentation
> >    License</citetitle></ulink>, Version 1.1 or any later version published
> >    by the Free Software Foundation with no Invariant Sections, no
> >    Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.
> > 
> > Does this seem correct?
> 
> According to the "How to use this License for your documents" section of
> the FDL and emails on this mailing list from Richard Stallman, it seems
> that we must also include a sentence directing the reader to a
> location of the FDL.  For stand-alone documents, it is supposed to
> be an appendix to the document.  For documents which are grouped
> together and distributed together, there can be one copy of the FDL
> which all of the documents link to.  In either case, we should add a 
> sentence at the end of this paragraph pointing the user to either the FDL
> appendix or the external FDL doc which is shipped with the primary doc.

Somebody should either CC or ask rms about how to best comply with the
license. He has proven helpful and he does awnser all mail directed to him :)
 
> > Also, shouldn't fdl.sgml be in $PREFIX/gnome/help/fdl/C/ ?
> 
> For the C local version, yes.  This brings up the interesting question of
> whether we can translate the FDL.  Does anybody know the guidelines on
> translating the FDL?  We also need to consider what happens on a non C
> user's system if the FDL is not translated?  Does it revert to the C copy
> or none at all?

I believe that you can't get any joe schmoe to translate a legal document. I
believe that all translations should be done by the FSF. 

If you have LOCALE set and the document is not found in the locale then it
will revert to the C locale (if it does not do this at this point in time it
is a bug).

> > And while including the fdl in gnome-libs seems the most practical
> > solution in technical terms, does that meet the requirement (?) to 
> > include a copy of the fdl with the document? 
> 
> I think so - on Sept 13, Richard Stallman gave Sasha's proposal the
> "okay" on gnome-doc-list :)
> 
> Oh - I left out one important detail - We should include a copy of the FDL
> in plain text in each of the GNOME packages. I guess we should make sure
> that the sentence at the end of the paragraph in the legalnotice links to
> the fdl.sgml file installed and also mentions the plain text copy
> installed by the package. (John - could you add that to your list of
> changes we need to do?)

You can have a COPYING.DOCS in the top-level directory i think