Re: [DOCPATCH] 3.3, make the GPL fix nicely into a few pages

[Simon Law <sfllaw at engmail dot uwaterloo dot ca>]

On Thu, Apr 17, 2003 at 08:24:48PM +0100, Joseph S. Myers wrote:
> On Thu, 17 Apr 2003, Simon Law wrote:
> 
> > 	Yes, that is exactly what I wrote.  It is unnecessary, but
> > harmless.  This is the simplest code I could think of to deal with this
> > issue.
> 
> I'd consider it unaesthetic to have the irregular page lengths for a paper
> size for which it doesn't serve a useful purpose (even though I'd be
> unlikely to notice it in the printed manual).
> 
> The proper way would be to condition on @smallbook, but since there
> doesn't seem to be an @ifsmallbook conditional and I don't think smallbook
> is a size users printing their own manuals are likely to use, I think
> conditioning under @ifset FSFPRINT would be appropriate.

	What do you mean by "page lengths"?  I don't think that anyone
can actually see the difference unless they are looking really
intensely.  In fact, there is no noticable a difference with the normal
page size.

> > > We can't really practicably reword to avoid any infelicities with any
> > > paper size Texinfo supports.
> > 
> > 	No we can't.  I admit that.  But at least there are some
> > standard sizes, no?
> 
> Yes, A4 (and we get complaints from users that the preformatted manuals on
> the website are formatted for A4 rather than US letter paper - presumably
> someone configured Texinfo on gcc.gnu.org that way).  Since many users use
> each of A4 and letter, there would be three sizes to consider (with
> smallbook used for FSF printing) - but I doubt that it's feasible to allow
> for them all when it gets down to the level of fiddling wording.

	I refuse to fiddle with wording.  However, I can put in some
work to get manuals in A4 _and_ USletter, if you think this is a good
thing.  I think that it's rather presumptious to think that the FSF is
the only user of the @smallbook feature.

Simon