Re: Title Page Suggestion

[David Merrill <david lupercalia net>]

On Thu, Nov 08, 2001 at 09:28:13AM +0000, Pat Costello wrote:
> 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. 

Why not put a single link for `About this document', and then list
contributors and sponsors there? We don't have anything against
recognizing companies that do the Right Thing, do we? But leave the
actual author's name on the title page, please. That individual
definitely deserves the credit. Just size and place it reasonably so
it isn't obtrusive.

> > X-Authentication-Warning: enlightenment.uchicago.edu: dmueth owned process 
> doing -bs
> > X-X-Sender: <dmueth enlightenment uchicago edu>
> > To: Pat Costello <Patrick Costello sun com>
> > cc: <gnome-doc-list gnome org>
> > Subject: Re: Title Page Suggestion
> > MIME-Version: 1.0
> > 
> > 
> > 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 may be out of date, are curious who the authors are, or want to know who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.

-- 
Dr. David C. Merrill                     http://www.lupercalia.net
Linux Documentation Project                   david lupercalia net
Collection Editor & Coordinator            http://www.linuxdoc.org

We have no intention of shipping another bloated OS and shoving it down the
throats of our users.
	--Paul Maritz, former Microsoft Vice President