Re: Proper use of FDL

[Ali Abdin <aliabdin aucegypt edu>]

* Dan Mueth (d-mueth uchicago edu) wrote at 02:27 on 22/09/00:
> On Thu, 21 Sep 2000 jfleck inkstain net wrote:
> 
> > 
> > 
> > On Thu, 21 Sep 2000, Dan Mueth wrote:
> > 
> > > 
> > > On Thu, 21 Sep 2000, John Fleck wrote:
> > > 
> > > > On Thu, Sep 21, 2000 at 01:01:13AM -0500, Dan Mueth wrote:
> > > 
> > > 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.
> > > 
> > 
> > So what might that sentence say? "the GNU Free Documentation license,
> > a copy of which is located at $PREFIX/share/gnome/help/C/fdl" ? A link to
> > pointing to the document is not sufficient?
> 
> 
> How about:
> 
> 	A copy of this license can be found <ulink
> 	url="gnome-help:fdl">online</ulink> or in the file
> 	<filename>COPYING-DOCS</filename> installed with this document.
> 
> Of course the COPYING-DOCS file merely needs to be shipped with the
> package, and does not need to be installed in the same directories as
> the other docs.
> 
> Does this sound okay to everybody?

If you are going to say 'online' then you would not use "gnome-help" URI, you
would use the "http" URI to link to the FDL on the FSF's webpage.

I think you should change the word online to say 'here' or something like
that. I also believe that there is no point in referring to COPYING-DOCS. No
application refers to the COPYING file and it would just confuse new users
(where is this COPYING-DOCS file!?)

Regards,
Ali