Subject: bug#1988: Making the license statement visible in the Emacs Manual

From: [email-masked] (Karl Berry)
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2009 17:38:18 -0600

eliz> The Texinfo manual _does_ give clear and specific advice about this:

Yeah.  Here is the message I sent to rms, Stefan, and Chong a few days
ago when rms first pinged me about this.

    [email-masked]> Currently, in the displayed HTML of the Emacs
    [email-masked]> Manual, there is nothing the specifically says it
    [email-masked]> is released under the GFDL
    
    rms [to karl]> Can you fix this and ack?

I can imagine either:

1) adding @insertcopying to the Top node, which is simple but adds ~20
   lines of text (the full copying notice), or

2) adding just a sentence saying to look at the source for the precise
   conditions, something like this:

     This manual is released under the GNU Free Documentation License.
     For the full copying conditions, please view the full source for
     this formatted file (e.g., @code{g*} in Info, View Source in HTML).

Do any of you have a preference for which way to go?

Also, related to this, right now the copying notice does not show up in
the plain text output at all, since there is separate "source" for the
formatted version.  Therefore I think the Top node should include the
following in any case:

@ifplaintext
@insertcopying
@end ifplaintext

Whatever way we go, I guess all the manuals need to follow suit.
Which makes me somewhat want to just use @insertcopying since it is
the simplest thing to do.

karl