Re: Title Page Suggestion

[Pat Costello <Patrick Costello sun com>]

Dan et al, 

Whereas I can appreciate that individual contributors would want to see their 
name at the top of the TOC, in the case of corporate contributors such as Sun, 
this would be undesirable. If the Sun Microsystems name appears at the top of a 
piece of documentation there could be a wrong impression generated about 
branding and ownership. As the GNOME desktop is a free software initiative, we 
would want to avoid that. The same ownership and branding issue would occur with 
other corporate players such as Redhat, and others who might want to join in 
later. 

So, would it be possible to have a situation where we could satisfy both 
requirements? In other words, could we have a setup whereby the author can 
choose to leave the name slot empty on the TOC, providing of course that the 
name slot on the linked Title Page is filled? This course of action would allow 
individual contributors the choice of including their names, and corporate 
contributors could be discreetly credited in the Title Page. 

Possible? 

Pat


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> Subject: Re: Title Page Suggestion
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> 
> On Wed, 7 Nov 2001, Pat Costello wrote:
> 
> > Does anyone else have any opinions about this question?
> 
> I tend to agree in that I expect the user will start at the TOC and then
> go to the sections of interest.  If they are concerned that the material
> may be out of date, are curious who the authors are, or want to know who
> to email with questions, then they may start looking for the section with
> this sort of info. We need to make sure it is pretty easy to find.  If we
> list the titlepage as "Title Page" in the TOC, I'm not sure whether users
> will know to look there.  I generally would prefer a solution which kept
> this info on the titlepage if it was easy for users to find though.
> 
> However, I can think of another reason for adding more info to the TOC
> page.  One of the top reasons people contribute to free software projects
> is for recognition, and so it is nice to place the contributors name at a
> very prominent place.  There is a certain satisfaction to going to an
> applet or application, choosing Help from the menu, and seeing your name
> pop up at the top of the window.  It may look somewhat out of place on the
> TOC page though.
> 
> Dan
>