Re: updating templates

[Alexander Kirillov <kirillov math sunysb edu>]

This is almost fine with me. I do have some minor problems, though. It is
probably too late to influence SUN docs, but still....
 
0. Pat: could you also provide html of the main body of the document,
   just to see how it is linked to title page?

1. I would like the legal stuff to be approved by someone other than
   just us - e.g. by GNOME foundation. Not that I see any problem with
   this, of course,  if both RMS and SUN legal dept agree :). But
   still, formally neither SUN nor RMS are authorized to make
   decisions for GNOME, and I want to be real careful here. Dan: you
   are the board member - can you bring it up?
 
2. I do not see any mention of the license for the app itself
   (i.e. GPL) on the title page. Is it intentional? 

3. The only contact addresses given are those of the authors. I would
   very much like to give reference to bugzilla, or better yet, to the
   doc on submitting feedback (such a doc has been written). Most
   app authors do not want to have  bug reports sent to their email
   address. 

4.If I understand correctly, SUN uses 2 DocBook files for each doc: one
  for title page stuff, the other one for everything else. Is this so?
  Is there a way to produce the same HTML output from one XML file,
  just by modifying stylesheets?

Sasha





On Wed, Oct 31, 2001 at 04:44:28PM +0000, Pat Costello wrote:
> 
> Some time ago, the Sun documentation team put forward a suggestion for a 
> separate area for all the boilerplate type information, as Sasha says in his 
> mail snip. As well as improving information accessibility for the user, this 
> approach - essentially a title page - conforms to the GFDL requirements. 
> However, there was an issue about liability and warranty that we needed to clear 
> up. At the moment, all parties who contribute to GNOME documentation are exposed 
> to legal action, due to the absence of such clauses. This is a potentially 
> serious issue. 
> 
> Legal representatives from Sun have just completed discussions with Richard 
> Stallman and with the Free Software Foundation to resolve the license issue. 
> Whereas the FSF recognises the need for the liability and warranty clauses, they 
> do not want to amend the GFDL. They suggest that the liability and warranty 
> clauses accompany each piece of documentation. This requirement creates another 
> benefit for having a title page, because it gives us a suitable place where we 
> can put these essential legal clauses. Another benefit of the title page 
> approach is that all of the purely technical information remaining in the manual 
> is easier for translators to process. 
> 
> A sample of a proposed title page is attached. The legal text for the liability 
> and warranty sections was written by a member of the Sun legal team. The concept 
> of the title page is that a user can open the title page from a Title Page link 
> that appears at the bottom of the manual TOC. 
> 
> Sun has already reworked a number of applet manuals as per the GNOME Style 
> Guide, and we are keen to put our work back into the community, plus 
> translations in nine languages. Now that the license question appears to be 
> close to resolution, Sun is in a position to start releasing that documentation. 
> If the Sun approach to the title page is workable for community usage, then the 
> Sun documentation will be generally usable. 
> 
> Pat