Re: mention printing of warranty information in GUI programs

[Simon Sobisch]

Am 20.10.2020 um 08:59 schrieb Alfred M. Szmidt:
>    If the program would open with a window/dialog and maybe even asks me to
>    click or type "I consent" then this is only fine exactly one time for a
>    given version.
>
> There is no need to "consent" to using a free software program,
> there is no reason to ask such a question.

So we completely agree on that.

>    And as our non-interactive programs does not print anything on each
>    startup (but on explicit request via --version / --help) I don't think
>    it us useful to do this in either of those places (some people may used
>    a --nologo switch to not have a compiler/linker show a version and
>    copyright info when they just wanted to compile/link a source).
>
> That is because it would be annoying to show such an message at each
> and every startup, which is why we don't do that.  But for long
> running programs, it makes sense to show such information to the user.
>
> There is no reason to fantasie about how one can annoy the user in the
> most annoying manner in GNU programs.

Agreed. And my point was that for many GUI/TUI programs we just don't
know how those are used - they may be "long running" (video editing
comes to mind) or short running "just show me that piece of
code/text/photo/video/..." - I therefore conclude that whatever is
possibly done in a TUI/GUI program about "printing warranty information"
should not disturb in any way.

The suggested change:

> Date: Sun, 18 Oct 2020 13:24:01 -0400
> From: ams@gnu.org (Alfred M. Szmidt)
> To: bug-standards@gnu.org
> Subject: mention printing of warranty information in GUI programs
> Message-ID: <E1kUCPZ-0005XT-Az@fencepost.gnu.org>
>
> --- standards.texi.~1.268.~   Thu Jul 30 22:34:33 2020
> +++ standards.texi    Sun Oct 18 19:22:12 2020
> @@ -962,6 +962,11 @@
>  screen readers (see
>  @url{https://www.gnu.org/accessibility/accessibility.html}).  This should
>  be automatic if you use GTK+.
> +
> +If your program is interactive, please also print the same information
> +as for the @code{--version} option (@pxref{--version}) on program
> +startup, and also provide instructions how to get more information
> +about the copying conditions and warranty details.
>
>  @node Command-Line Interfaces
>  @section Standards for Command Line Interfaces

is for me (when just reading that change as-is) a request to annoy the
user, which is not the intention.

> What do people think about this?

I think that the text either needs more explanation and samples how to
do that or should not be applied.

If the program has a menu then it should contain an info/version item to
show this, similar when it has commands (like vim or emacs), then there
should a command to print this.
If it is possible to print it to the user without annoying, (like "show
in background like a file to view" if no file is open [like VIm does])
then this would be good, too.

Simon