Re: Proposal: Include C Manual from RMS in Emacs git, and/or release

[Björn Bidar]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > The issues the others mentioned mainly the lack of acceptance of the
>   > format
>
> "Lack of acceptance" is a broad term.  It can manifest in various
> ways, and for this purpose, it matters which way.
>
>            and for sometime the possibility to find info manual manly due
>   > the first problem.
>
> What does "the first problem" refer to?  It sounds like a reference to
> something before this paragraph, but thee was no text from you before
> that.

If I want to read manual in Emacs outside of smaller man-pages or
projects which split their manual of several man-pages than I would
prefer to find them in the Info format.  
Because of the limited acceptance finding manuals in the info format is hard.

>
>   > Some projects switched to documentation systems which don't provide
>   > anything but HTML or PDF such as e.g. Doxygen or those where the info
>   > output is available but fragile and usually not enabled due problem one.
>
> This will have reduced the range of manuals available in Info format
> and thus harmed the success of Info format.  But I don't see how it relates
> to the difficulty getting the basic Info support ncluded in the distro.
>
>   > In the instance of the this specific manual it's just that it's one
>   > specific document which isn't distributed along other software which is
>   > unusual but also that it doesn't get much exposure I think.
>
> Should we recruit people to package it for various kinds of distros?

Just make packaging easy. Packaging manuals is quite easy as long
as all the legal requirements are met. Outside of that there are already
methods for installing methods from other sources if necessary. 

>
>   > The last issue is that the license make it impossible to be distributed
>   > for some namely those which are Debian based but not solely those.
>
> We could pubish a .deb made from the manual, for distros less rigid
> than Debian to include.  Should we do that?

It could help but fixing some of the issues Debian mentioned would be
another, IMHO better way. Just printing out the manual is impractical
with it's current manual to e.g. use it for education as you would have
to print out the full license each time. Multiply that per student
handed a page in the manual and it gets expensive fast.

Debian is only rigid on the freedom of their users, just like Gnu is.
It all depends on your lens.

>
>   > Related: I package the manual for RPM based distribution below:
>   > 
> https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/home:Thaodan:Documentation/c-intro-and-ref
>
> Would you like to distribute that package via gnu.org?
> I'd rather point to it there than on opensuse.org.

The package would be included in the distributions package manager just
like Emacs is already. If it is on gnu.org it would require the user to
add the repository to the package manager first.

Besides I think openSUSE can be trusted and the Open BuildService is
great software for this kind of purpose.
But nothing stops Gnu from creating their own OBS instance for their
packages to be build.