Re: New GNOME Desktop Accessibility Guide

[Irene Ryan <irene ryan sun com>]

Hi Sharon,

I'd like to address some of the points in your mail.  

I continued to develop the preliminary work-in-progress documents that I
placed in the GNOME CVS tree 
on 11 September. I posted XML files with substantially revised content
in a /WIP subdirectory in the same CVS area on 07 November. I notified
everyone about these files on the same day. See the following
announcement: 

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-doc-list/2002-November/msg00004.html

The authorship of this material was public knowledge. I have not issued
any drafts since 07 November but I am still working on the material and
I plan to issue new drafts at the end of this week and I will also post
these in CVS.

As regards copyright and acknowledgement, Sun is satisfied if you put an
acknowledgements section into your manual, that says the following: 

Acknowledgements
----------------
Material for the key navigation and AccessX chapters of this manual was
derived in part from documentation by Sun Microsystems Inc.

Regards,
-Irene


Sharon D Snider wrote:
> 
> John,
> 
> Attached is the original email that I was copied on. I used the engineering
> input docs that were in CVS. It did not include the author. As you can see
> by this note, Irene had not converted her docs yet and was on vacation for
> 3 weeks. The engineering input did not indicate any copyright.
> 
> I would have acknowledged the author had the information been included and
> I would be glad to add it now. I did not realize that these were part of
> Irene's draft.
> 
> Sincerely,
> Sharon Snider
> 
> Hi Rich,
> 
> We have a specific need to have a reasonable first version of the GNOME on
> Solaris Accessibility Guide ready by the end of November. For printed
> guides, we
> use a version of SolBook SGML and internal tools for editing, linting,
> proofing
> and printing. Therefore, for reasons of both tools and style, it would be
> difficult to co-author both a Solaris and a generic guide in time to meet
> our
> requirements.
> 
> I agree that open development of both guides could be beneficial for
> everyone.
> Irene will focus on the Solaris guide. She will make available all work,
> including drafts of the Solaris guide and engineering inputs, for public
> review
> and sharing.  Irene will convert her SolBook draft to XML weekly and post
> the
> draft in gnome/cvs.
> 
> To start this process, we have just dropped some engineering input
> documents
> into the gnome/cvs tree at the following location:
> 
>         gnome-docu/gdp/contrib/accessibility
> 
> Irene is on vacation for the next 3 weeks, so I don't expect any further
> material to go in there until she gets back. We will announce our
> intentions to
> the community and ask their input and participation also.
> 
> Regards
> 
> John
> 
> Sharon Snider
> Linux Accessibility, and Information Development
> IBM Linux Technology Services
> (512) 838-4127, T/L 678-4127
> 
> 
>                       John Fleck
>                       <jfleck inkstain         To:       John Sheehan Sun COM
>                       net>                     cc:       Sharon D Snider/Austin/IBM IBMUS, gnome-doc-list <gnome-doc-list gnome org>
>                                                Subject:  Re: New GNOME Desktop Accessibility Guide
>                       11/25/2002 10:46
>                       AM
> 
> 
> 
> Folks -
> 
> I must say that I am very uncomfortable with the remarkable similarity
> between the keyboard navigation section of Sharon's accessibility guide
> published last week and the material Irene wrote and made available in
> GNOME cvs two months ago.
> 
> One of the fundamental values of the free software development process
> is the benefit derived by expanding on the work of others. An important
> corollary is that the people who did the original work receive
> appropriate credit.
> 
> On Mon, 2002-11-25 at 08:49, John Sheehan wrote:
> > Hi Sharon,
> >
> > I see that you published a GNOME 2.0 Accessibility Guide last week. This
> relates
> > to the discussion that we had in September about Sun's plans for the
> GNOME
> > Accessibility Guide.
> >
> > As you are aware, Irene Ryan placed preliminary draft material in gnome
> cvs of
> > the GNOME 2.0 on Solaris Accessibility Guide on 11 September 2002, for
> Sun
> > Microsystems. This draft was really intended for review and comment. You
> appear
> > to have used this draft material to update your GNOME 1.4 Accessibility
> Guide to
> > 2.0. Some of the chapters are clearly derived from Irene's preliminary
> draft
> > material, particularly the keynav chapter.
> >
> > We are putting our drafts into gnome-docu/gdp/contrib as a result of
> requests
> > from you for information about our intentions as regards the
> accessibility
> > guide. We did not expect that you would publish this draft material under
> your
> > name and copyright, without any sharing of copyright with Sun or any
> > acknowledgement.
> >
> > As the drafts that Irene issued in gnome cvs are covered by the GFDL, we
> retain
> > full rights to continue developing our original material. We will publish
> a
> > final version in a month or so, and therefore we want to clarify the
> reasons for
> > any similarity between the final manual that we publish and the document
> that
> > you published last week.
> >
> > We welcome you using material that we put back to the community, but we
> must
> > establish that we have the right to continue working on our original
> material in
> > light of your move to publish a work derived from our original sources.
> You do
> > not need to acknowledge Sun in your manual, but we have to establish that
> Sun
> > has prior rights to the material in gnome-docu/gdp/contrib/accessibility
> >
> > Regards
> >
> > John
> >
> >
> > John Sheehan wrote:
> > >
> > > Sharon D Snider wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Hi John,
> > > >
> > > > I noticed you were copied on this email and I would like to confirm
> that I
> > > > understand Pat's response correctly. As I mentioned in the original
> email.
> > > > I would like to contribute documentation on GNOME2 accessibility for
> Linux
> > > > to the GNOME2 User Guide.
> > > >
> > > > My original request was sent out to the gnome-doc-list to find out if
> > > > anyone in the community was working on an accessibility section. the
> only
> > > > response I received back  from my inquiry was from Pat Costello.
> > > >
> > > > The area that concerned me was his following comment,  "Therefore, we
> are
> > > > not really in a position to collaborate on a generic GNOME
> accessibility
> > > > guide, as such a document would not meet our needs."
> > > >
> > > > Was Pat speaking for the GNOME documentation project and the GNOME2
> User's
> > > > Guide that is being distributed for Linux?
> > > > It is my goal to be able to help the Linux community provide
> accessibility
> > > > documentation for GNOME2 that can be included in the GNOME2 User
> Guide for
> > > > the Linux distribution.
> > > >
> > > > If there is someone else I need to contact, please advise. Your help
> with
> > > > this would be greatly appreciated.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Hi Sharon,
> > >
> > > Irene Ryan (irene ryan sun com) is starting to look at the structure of
> > > an Accessibility Guide for Gnome on Solaris.  We believe that unlike
> the
> > > User Guide we are not going to be able to keep this generic because it
> > > may contain some user information and some system admin information
> > > relating to the GNOME bundle we release and to the hardware (including
> > > accessibility devices) on which we support it.
> > >
> > > We want to cover everything related to accessibility in our one guide.
> > > Examples of specific issues are:
> > >
> > >     - our X11 server needs certain options set so that AccessX works
> > >
> > >     - we may have a specific braille reader that we ship.
> > >
> > >     - we may have a freeware text-to-speech that differs from that
> > >       of other distributions.
> > >
> > >     - our key nav could differ by 0.5% from that of the community
> > >       because at the time of shipping it is possible that Owen Taylor
> > >       who maintains gtk will not have accepted all our patches back.
> > >
> > >     - an accessible login is critical - but we do not use gdm so
> > >       we will have to describe our accessible 'dtlogin' to our readers.
> > >
> > >     - a lot of freeware tools that the linux accessibility group
> > >       would like to see described (and which you may have listed in
> > >       your earlier guide) may not work or be appropriate on Solaris
> > >
> > > The Guide will be issued under GFDL, and drafts will be made available
> > > as soon as they are ready.  Other writers in the GNOME documentation
> > > project are welcome to use any parts of it in a generic or in a
> > > Linux-specific document.
> > >
> > > However, we would like to keep the User Guide and Accessibility Guide
> > > separate for the reasons listed above.  Also we believe the level of
> > > detail in an Accessibility Guide would be much deeper than a User
> Guide.
> > > For example:
> > >
> > >      - the AccessX preference tool is described in about 1 page in
> > >        the User Guide.  In the Accessibility Guide several pages will
> > >        be devoted to how it might be used.
> > >
> > >      - We would need 5 to 10 pages to describe keynav in Gnome.  This
> > >        would be a central section in the Accessiblity Guide, whereas
> > >        in a User Guide it might be best as an Appendix because it would
> > >        break the flow of the book otherwise.
> > >
> > > Perhaps the User Guide could contain a link to the Accessibility
> > > Guide(s) so that it could be seamlessly accessed.
> > >
> > > Regards
> > >
> > > John
> > >
> > > > Sincerely,
> > > > Sharon Snider
> > > > Linux Information Development, Accessibility, and Usability
> > > > IBM Linux Technology Services
> > > > (512) 838-4127, T/L 678-4127
> > > >
> > > > ----- Forwarded by Sharon D Snider/Austin/IBM on 09/03/2002 01:57 PM
> -----
> > > >
> > > >                       Pat Costello
> > > >                       <Patrick.Costello        To:       Sharon D
> Snider/Austin/IBM IBMUS
> > > >                       @Sun.COM>                cc:
> john sheehan dub-mail1 Ireland Sun COM
> > > >                                                Subject:  Re: New
> GNOME Desktop Accessibility Guide
> > > >                       08/14/2002 11:46
> > > >                       AM
> > > >                       Please respond to
> > > >                       Pat Costello
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Hi Sharon,
> > > >
> > > > Sorry I didn't get back to you earlier about your attached mail, we
> are
> > > > just
> > > > emerging from the holiday season. The documentation team at Sun has
> > > > considered
> > > > your mail, and we thought it only fair to let you know what we are
> doing as
> > > >
> > > > regards an Accessibility Guide.
> > > >
> > > > We will produce an Accessibility Guide for the GNOME on Solaris
> desktop,
> > > > but the
> > > > way things look at the moment, the guide will be very Sun-specific.
> The
> > > > guide
> > > > will talk about Sun-only accessibility applications, Sun hardware,
> and
> > > > Solaris-specific considerations. Beyond those few topics, we are
> still
> > > > forming
> > > > our ideas about what we want to put into the manual.
> > > >
> > > > Therefore, we are not really in a position to collaborate on a
> generic
> > > > GNOME
> > > > accessibility guide, as such a document would not meet our needs.
> > > >
> > > > Having said that, when we have our document in a reasonably advanced
> state,
> > > > we
> > > > will issue drafts to anyone who is interested in the subject. We
> would
> > > > appreciate your comments, if you are willing to be a reviewer. Even
> though
> > > > our
> > > > document will have a strong Sun flavor, we aim to publish our
> Accessiblity
> > > > Guide
> > > > as an open-source manual when the document is completed.
> > > >
> > > > Regards,
> > > >
> > > > Pat
> > > >
> > > > > Delivered-To: gnome-doc-list gnome org
> > > > > Subject: New GNOME Desktop Accessibility Guide
> > > > > To: gnome-doc-list gnome org
> > > > > X-MIMETrack: Serialize by Router on D03NM805/03/M/IBM(Release
> 5.0.10
> > > > |March
> > > > 22, 2002) at 07/26/2002 09:35:55 AM
> > > > > MIME-Version: 1.0
> > > > > X-BeenThere: gnome-doc-list gnome org
> > > > > X-Loop: gnome-doc-list gnome org
> > > > > X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.8
> > > > > List-Help: <mailto:gnome-doc-list-request gnome org?subject=help>
> > > > > List-Post: <mailto:gnome-doc-list gnome org>
> > > > > List-Subscribe: <
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-doc-list>,
> > > > <mailto:gnome-doc-list-request gnome org?subject=subscribe>
> > > > > List-Id: GNOME documentation issues <gnome-doc-list.gnome.org>
> > > > > List-Unsubscribe: <
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-doc-list
> > > > >,
> > > > <mailto:gnome-doc-list-request gnome org?subject=unsubscribe>
> > > > > List-Archive: <http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-doc-list/>
> > > > >
> > > > > Last February, I sent out a note regarding a GNOME 1.4 Desktop
> > > > > Accessibility User's Guide, primarily for  Ximian,  that we have
> been
> > > > > working. It may have been poor timing with all the work and effort
> going
> > > > > toward GNOME2. However, now that GNOME2 is available, I would like
> to
> > > > > update the guide so the information  can be included with the
> GNOME2
> > > > > desktop, or if others are currently working on accessibility
> > > > documentation,
> > > > > I would like to help in their efforts.
> > > > >
> > > > > If there is anyway I can help or if you would like a copy of the
> original
> > > > > guide, please let me know and I'll forward you the zip file.
> > > > >
> > > > > Sharon Snider
> > > > > Linux Information Development, Accessibility, and Usability
> > > > > IBM Linux Technology Services
> > > > > (512) 838-4127, T/L 678-4127
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > gnome-doc-list mailing list
> > > > > gnome-doc-list gnome org
> > > > > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-doc-list
> > _______________________________________________
> > gnome-doc-list mailing list
> > gnome-doc-list gnome org
> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-doc-list
> --
> John Fleck
> jfleck inkstain net (h) jfleck abqjournal com (w)
> http://www.inkstain.net http://www.abqjournal.com
> 
> "Sometimes, a diner is all about the mac and cheese."
>   - Zippy the Pinhead
> 
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