diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
line changes: +26/-39
index fbb6aa1..2904fe3
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS

@@ -1,48 +1,55 @@
-GNU Hello NEWS -- history of user-visible changes.  2002-11-03
+$Id: NEWS,v 1.2 2005/03/20 23:53:34 karl Exp $
+This NEWS file records noteworthy changes, very tersely.
+See the manual for detailed information.
 
-Copyright (C) 1992, 1993, 1995-2002, 2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
-See the end for copying conditions.
+  Copyright (C) 1992, 1993, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001,
+  2002, 2003, 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.  
 
-Please send GNU Hello bug reports to bug-gnu-hello@gnu.org.
+  Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
+  are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
+  notice and this notice are preserved.
 
-Version 2.1.2
+
+* Distribution:
+  . Update shared source files, such as texinfo.tex and getopt.c.
+
+
+Version 2.1.2 (20 July 2002)
 * Updated translations: es, fr, fi, nb, pt_BR, ru, sk, uk.
 * New translations: eu, fa, es_AR, ga, ka, ro, sr, zh_CN.
 
 
-Version 2.1.1
+Version 2.1.1 (9 June 2002)
 * Bugfixes:
-*. Display the bug reporting address.
+  . Display the bug reporting address.
 
 
-Version 2.1.0
-
+Version 2.1.0 (22 May 2002)
 * Automake support.
 * Experimental NLS ("Native Language Support").
 * Translations for ca, da, de, el, eo, es, et, fi, fr, gl, he, hr, hu,
-  id, it, ja, ko, lv, nb, nl, nn, pl, pt, pt_BR, ru, sk, sl, sv, tr, and
-  uk.
+  id, it, ja, ko, lv, nb, nl, nn, pl, pt, pt_BR, ru, sk, sl, sv, tr, and uk.
 * Test suite.
 * Add a contrib directory.
 * Manual page, produced with 'help2man'.
 * Create proper copyright statement for all output formats.
 * New greeting message ('-n', '--next-generation').
 * Bugfixes:
-*. GNU hello ('-m') does not loop forever if MAIL environment variable is
-   not set.
-
-Version 1.3
+  . GNU hello ('-m') does not loop forever if MAIL environment variable is
+    not set.
 
+
+Version 1.3 (22 May 1993)
 * GNU hello now exits immediately and successfully after printing its
   version number and/or usage message under the `--version' (or `-v') and
   `--help' (or `-h') options.
-
-Version 1.2
 
-* GNU hello can now read your mail with the `-m' (or `--mail') option.
 
-Version 1.1
+Version 1.2 (21 May 1993)
+* GNU hello can now read your mail with the `-m' (or `--mail') option.
 
+
+Version 1.1 (16 September 1992)
 * There is a new, improved greeting message.
   You can use the new `--traditional' option to get the old behavior.
 

@@ -50,23 +57,3 @@ Version 1.1
 
 * There is now a `NEWS' file (this one), giving a history of
   user-visible changes.
-
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
-Copyright information:
-
-Copyright (C) 1992, 1993, 1996 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
-
-   Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
-   of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
-   copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
-   thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
-
-   Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
-   of this document, or of portions of it,
-   under the above conditions, provided also that they
-   carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
-
-Local variables:
-version-control: never
-mode: indented-text
-end:

diff --git a/README b/README
line changes: +48/-11
index d1a9f4d..0eb9adb
--- a/README
+++ b/README

@@ -1,18 +1,55 @@
-We are pleased to announce the version 2.1 release of GNU Hello.
-All reported bugs in previous test releases have been fixed.
-Some bugs surely remain.
+$Id: README,v 1.2 2005/03/20 23:53:34 karl Exp $
+This is the README file for the GNU Hello distribution.
+Hello prints a pleasant greeting.  It also serves as a sample GNU
+package, showing practices that may be useful for GNU projects.
 
-The GNU implementation of this classic program is brought to you by
-the efforts of several people, including Mike Haertel, David MacKenzie,
-Jan Brittenson, Roland McGrath, Charles Hannum, and The King.
+  Copyright (C) 1992, 1993, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001,
+  2002, 2004, 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
+
+  Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
+  are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
+  notice and this notice are preserved.
+
+See the files ./INSTALL* for building and installation instructions.
+
+Primary distribution point: ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/hello/
+ (list of mirrors: http://www.gnu.org/prep/ftp.html)
+
+Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/hello/
+ (list of mirrors: http://www.gnu.org/server/list-mirrors.html)
+
+Mailing list: bug-hello@gnu.org
+- please use this list for all discussion: bug reports, enhancements, etc.
+- archived at: http://lists.gnu.org/pipermail/bug-hello
+- anyone is welcome to join the list; to do so, visit:
+  http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-hello
+- there is no corresponding newsgroup.
+
+Bug reports:
+ Please include enough information for the maintainers to reproduce the
+ problem.  Generally speaking, that means:
+- the contents of any input files necessary to reproduce the bug (crucial!).
+- a description of the problem and any samples of the erroneous output.
+- the version number of the program(s) involved (use --version).
+- hardware, operating system, and compiler versions (uname -a).
+- unusual options you gave to configure, if any (see config.status).
+- anything else that you think would be helpful.
+
+Patches are most welcome; if possible, please make them with diff -c and
+include ChangeLog entries.
+
+See README.dev for information on the Hello development environment --
+any interested parties are welcome.  If you're a programmer and wish to
+contribute, this should get you started.  If you're not a programmer,
+you can still make significant contributions by writing test cases,
+checking the documentation against the implementation, translating the
+program strings to other languages, etc.
 
 The basic algorithm is described in: "The C Programming Language", by
-B. W. Kernighan and D. M. Ritchie, Prentice-Hall, New Jersey, 1978;
+B.W. Kernighan and D.M. Ritchie, Prentice-Hall, New Jersey, 1978;
 the program is an enhancement of the one published in that book.
 
-See the file INSTALL for building and installation instructions.
-
-Please send all bug reports by electronic mail to:
-    bug-gnu-hello@gnu.org
+The GNU implementation of this classic program is brought to you by
+the efforts of several people.  Please see the ./AUTHORS file.
 
 GNU Hello is free software.  See the file COPYING for copying conditions.

diff --git a/README-alpha b/README-alpha
line changes: +27/-9
index 71aeeb5..8abbadc
--- a/README-alpha
+++ b/README-alpha

@@ -1,12 +1,30 @@
-This is a test release of GNU Hello.
-Please do not send reports about this release to any
-GNU mailing list or newsgroup.
+$Id: README-alpha,v 1.2 2005/03/20 23:53:34 karl Exp $
+This is the README-alpha file for GNU Hello prereleases.
 
-Please send all bug reports to Karl Eichwalder <ke@gnu.franken.de>.
+  Copyright (C) 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005
+  Free Software Foundation, Inc.
 
-If you're interested in the development of GNU hello and/or in
-pre-testing forthcoming releases, please subscribe to the `hello-list'
-at https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/hello-bug /
+  Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
+  are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
+  notice and this notice are preserved.
 
-The development site with CVS access is located at
-http://developer.berlios.de/projects/hello/ .
+This is a test release!
+
+The latest test release (if any) is available at
+  ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/hello/
+
+Ordinarily, reports about pretest releases like this one are sent to a
+different list than for official releases.  In the case of GNU Hello,
+though, traffic is so low this is not necessary.  Therefore, please
+email bug reports, comments, etc. to bug-hello@gnu.org.
+
+You are welcome to join this list;
+to do so, visit http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-hello.
+It's archived at http://lists.gnu.org/pipermail/bug-hello.
+
+If you see a problem in this release that you've already reported, feel
+free to re-report it -- it's good to get a reminder.  If you sent a
+patch for a previous release, and you haven't received any feedback
+about it, please do re-send it, it likely got lost.
+
+For development environment information, see README.dev.

diff --git a/README.dev b/README.dev
line changes: +22/-0
index 0000000..75800af
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.dev

@@ -0,0 +1,22 @@
+$Id: README.dev,v 1.1 2005/03/20 23:53:34 karl Exp $
+This README.dev file describes the development environment.
+
+  Copyright (C) 2002, 2003, 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
+
+  Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
+  are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
+  notice and this notice are preserved.
+
+The development sources for GNU Texinfo are available through anonymous
+CVS at Savannah:
+  http://savannah.gnu.org/cvs/?group=texinfo
+
+This distribution uses whatever versions of Automake, Autoconf, and
+Gettext are listed in NEWS; usually the latest ones released.  If you
+are getting the sources from CVS (or change configure.ac), you'll need
+to have these tools installed to (re)build.  You'll also need help2man.
+All of these programs are available from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu.
+
+After getting the CVS sources, and installing the tools above, you can run
+  ./bootstrap
+to do a fresh build.  After that first time, running make should suffice.

diff --git a/THANKS b/THANKS
line changes: +11/-8
index 3af18e1..e8195c2
--- a/THANKS
+++ b/THANKS

@@ -1,3 +1,12 @@
+$Id: THANKS,v 1.2 2005/03/20 23:53:34 karl Exp $
+Additional contributors to GNU Hello.
+ 
+  Copyright (C) 1999, 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
+  
+  Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
+  are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
+  notice and this notice are preserved.
+
 Thanks to:
 
     Fran�ois Pinard for assistance and good ideas.

@@ -17,12 +26,6 @@ Thanks to:
 
     Fabrice Bauzac and Thomas Bushnell.
 
-Thanks to all the translators (run 'grep -e ^\"Last-Translator: po/*.po').
-
-Fuerth, 2002-06-08
---
-work : ke@suse.de                          |                   ,__o
-     : http://www.suse.de/~ke/             |                 _-\_<,
-home : keichwa@gmx.net                     |                (*)/'(*)
-
+    All the translators (run 'grep -e ^\"Last-Translator: po/*.po').
 
+See also the AUTHORS and ChangeLog files.