Re: @dircategory (Re: Translating Emacs manuals is of strategic importance)

[Gavin Smith]

On Sat, Jan 06, 2024 at 10:36:28AM +0200, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > Would @author be also used for the translator?
> 
> @author is a TeX command and goes into the printed version.  For
> translation, we'd need a separate directive, I think, since a
> translator is not the author.  Again, this is something for the
> Texinfo folks to handle.

The Texinfo manual gives the example

     @author by Jane Smith and John Doe

The word "by" show that the argument of @author does not just have
to be the name of the author.  However, it may be confusing for some
output formats, such as DocBook.  The example in the Texinfo manual:

@titlepage
@title NAME-OF-MANUAL-WHEN-PRINTED
@subtitle SUBTITLE-IF-ANY
@subtitle SECOND-SUBTITLE
@author AUTHOR
@page
...
@end titlepage

yields, in DocBook:

<bookinfo><title>NAME-OF-MANUAL-WHEN-PRINTED</title>
<subtitle>SUBTITLE-IF-ANY
SECOND-SUBTITLE</subtitle>
<authorgroup>
<collab><collabname>AUTHOR</collabname></collab>
</authorgroup>
</bookinfo>

It's questionable whether this would be a correct use of <collabname>
and <authorgroup> or not.  The online DocBook documentation says,

"The AuthorGroup element is a wrapper around multiple authors or other
collaborators."

<https://tdg.docbook.org/tdg/4.5/authorgroup>

- and a translator is indeed a collaborator, although a word like "by"
is not part of their name.

In short I doubt it leads to practical problems putting a translator
in an @author line.  If they are clearly stated as a translator, and
not an author, there are no legal or moral problems.

If there are any real problems, these could of course be discussed.