Re: Please post older versions of GNU Emacs manuals on the web

[Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.net>]

>>>>> Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:

[…]

 > Sure, the Wayback Machine is a great resource, and the Internet
 > Archive responsible for it is a great place to visit in San
 > Francisco.

 > But telling users to look to Internet archives (or to just google for
 > “defadvice emacs”) does not really answer my question of “Why not?”
 > or respond to my proposal.

	I see no reason we can’t do both: we can tell the users (or,
	rather, their UAs) to use the Wayback machine by providing links
	to the archived pages at http://gnu.org/s/emacs/manual/ – as
	well as all the Emacs documentation pages referenced there.
	With some effort, we could probably even link to the
	documentation for specific Emacs versions from there.

 > IMO we should offer Emacs users easy online access to the manuals for
 > older Emacs versions, the same way we offer them easy access to the
 > recent manuals and to both the recent and older versions of the
 > software.

 > This is the least we could do to help users and show them respect.
 > It should not be easier to find information about older releases of
 > Oracle, Apple, Microsoft, or IBM software than it is to find such
 > info for Emacs.

	I tend to agree that providing documentation for at least the
	latest releases of all the major versions is a well-established
	practice in the field, and I know of no reason why GNU in
	general – and not just Emacs – can’t follow it.

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