Re: [docbook] Limited Legalnotice?

[Fredrik Unger <fred@tree.se>]

Hi,

I think the use case for legalnotice is not to list licenses that needs 
to be included somewhere but to put a license at the beginning of a book 
for example.
Most books have a Copyright statement and more before the title pages.
Others would have to correct me but I think that is the background.

Could you describe your use case in more detail ?
Is it a software manual that needs to include for example the GPL 
license as a full text ?

Regarding point 2. legalnotice can have quite some children (63) 
including <para>. copyright only 2. What substructures do you miss ?

I have worked with a different use case.

I looked to use Creative commons in a document in November 2007 [1], and 
wanted the "Creative commons" look. That was my first try.

Some years later in June 2011 I tried to add some CC licensed images in
a document, and wanted to attribute the author. I ended up writing
a small proposal.[2] It is still limited to the info tags.

I filed a RFE in February this year just to see if my (small) work could 
be useful. RFE 3491860 [3]
This RFE is under discussion by the Technical Committee [4]

My problem was two fold as the solution shows. [5]

- First to be able to mark up parts like a document or an image in
  a document with a short "standard" license mark. (cc.rnc)
- Secondly to have such a mark produce well known output
  (cc.xsl) Such a extension stylesheet could also be implemented
  outside docbook standard distribution.
  In my case only a link to the license description is added.
  I am not sure how much of the license text has to be included
  in a document to be "proper", eg your case with an Appendix.

Maybe the use cases can be combined into a good overall solution that
do not add too much new stuff to docbook..

I would be interested to know how other people deal with this problem.

Sincerely,

Fredrik Unger


[1] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/200711/msg00061.html

[2] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook/201106/msg00013.html

[3] 
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=3491860&group_id=21935&atid=384107

[4] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook/201205/msg00018.html

[5] http://article.tree.se/tools/docbook/cc.en.html

On 05/19/2012 06:48 PM, Thomas Schraitle wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm wondering about the legalnotice[1] element and observed some limiting
> characteristics:
>
> 1. Currently, legalnotice is (more or less) only useful in
>     *infos, but cannot be used as a division element similar
>     to chapter, appendix, part, or even book.
>
> 2. The legalnotice in its current incarnation doesn't allow
>     any substructures.
>
> The reason why I'm asking is that I have some open source licenses which
> contain substructures. These licenses need to be included in the book. At the
> moment, I use appendix for this task. However, from a semantic point of view,
> a legalnotice would be more appropriate. Unfortunately, legalnotice is too
> limited for this task as stated above.
>
> I don't suggest to change that, but I would like to know what's the reason
> behind this (probably DocBook's history?)
>
> Thanks! :-)
>
>
> ----
> [1] http://www.docbook.org/tdg51/en/html/legalnotice.html