Re: [PATCH] doc: Improve the copyright notice.

[Ludovic Courtès]

address@hidden (Karl Berry) skribis:

>     make sure the copyright notice still shows up in Info,
>     HTML, and PS/PDF
>
> It's always good to check, but like I said, that is exactly why I
> invented @copying in the first place (back in 2002).  I wrote about it
> in the Texinfo manual.
>
> I think it was not working for you (if indeed it wasn't) because your
> use of @copying was too late in the source file.

OK.

>     visible in Info and HTML.)
>
> It depends on what you mean by "visible".  The @copying on its own will
> include the copying text as a comment in all the makeinfo output files
> (Info, HTML, Docbook, XML).  That's how rms wanted it, and that's what
> takes care of the legal necessities.

By visible I meant that the copyright notice would appear in the Top
node in Info, and at the beginning of the HTML document (I see the
Coreutils and gawk manuals do that, but not the Texinfo and libc
manuals, for instance.)

I thought this was good practice, but I’m glad to hear it’s actually not
the recommended way to deal with it.

> If you want casual readers of the manual to see the copying terms, as
> well as people looking at the source, then you can use @insertcopying in
> the Top node (as well as in the @titlepage, which is what takes care of
> TeX).  Like I also said, rms prefers that not be done, but didn't feel
> strongly enough to make it a GNU requirement either way, so it's up to you.

OK, then I’m happy to follow the recommended approach.

So Nikita: please ignore what I wrote and follow Karl’s advice.  :-)

Thanks for taking the time to explain,
Ludo’.