Re: [PATCH] Improve adherance to the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

[Joseph Myers <joseph at codesourcery dot com>]

On Thu, 6 Dec 2018, Carlos O'Donell wrote:

> On 10/24/18 12:48 AM, Richard Stallman wrote:
> > That doesn't decide the question of the abort(3) joke.  There are
> > other issues to decide before that.
>  
> I posed some questions here which remain unanswered:
> https://www.sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2018-10/msg00449.html
> 
> I am going to restate them again here since I'm seeking resolution on
> a way forward.
> 
> How would you like to proceed on the resolution of these issues?
> 
> Could you please enumerate the broader issues you would like resolved?

I would like to suggest that we start with the following issue:

* When is content that involves or depends on some country-specific 
context suitable for inclusion in the technical parts of GNU manuals?  
(This issue only concerns the technical parts of the manuals, not the 
content of the Invariant Sections.)

It's not the most general question in this area, but it should also not be 
the most controversial, which is an advantage.  If the conclusion is that 
country-specific content is not suitable for the documentation of the 
abort function, that would be sufficient to resolve the question of the 
inclusion of this joke (which I think is clearly US-specific, being about 
one particular US government rule, even though it's easy to interpret as 
being about abortion more generally), and the other issues could be 
considered at leisure, independenty.

My suggested answer is: because GNU manuals are for an international 
audience, they should avoid privileging US or other country-specific 
viewpoints and avoid assuming such country-specific context.  Content 
involving or depending on country-specific context is only suitable when 
there is something country-specific about the features being documented.  
So in the glibc manual, such content might be suitable for documentation 
of locale, timezone and other i18n facilities, especially when describing 
a feature that exists because of the peculiarities of some particular 
country or language or that is best illustrated with reference to such 
peculiarities, but would not be suitable for the documentation of abort.

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com