Received: (at maintonly) by bugs.debian.org; 19 Jul 2001 04:25:50 +0000 From swift@alum.mit.edu Wed Jul 18 23:25:50 2001 Return-path: Received: from poseidon.shore.net [::ffff:207.244.124.88] by master.debian.org with esmtp (Exim 3.12 1 (Debian)) id 15N5Nm-0000PD-00; Wed, 18 Jul 2001 23:25:50 -0500 Received: from swift.shore.net [206.243.167.24] by poseidon.shore.net with esmtp (Exim) for maintonly@bugs.debian.org id 15N5NW-0005Y9-00; Thu, 19 Jul 2001 00:25:35 -0400 Received: from beth.swift.xxx (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by localhost (8.12.0.Beta7/8.12.0.Beta7/Debian 8.12.0.Beta7-1) with ESMTP id f6J3o1Da019506 for ; Wed, 18 Jul 2001 23:50:01 -0400 Received: (from swift@localhost) by beth.swift.xxx (8.12.0.Beta7/8.12.0.Beta7/Debian 8.12.0.Beta7-1) id f6J3fD96018231; Wed, 18 Jul 2001 23:41:13 -0400 Message-Id: <200107190341.f6J3fD96018231@beth.swift.xxx> From: Matthew Swift To: Debian Bug Tracking System Subject: texdoc should make all Debian TeX documentation available X-Reportbug-Version: 1.21 X-Mailer: reportbug 1.21 Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 23:41:13 -0400 Delivered-To: maintonly@bugs.debian.org Package: tetex-bin Version: 1.0.7+20001218-4 Severity: wishlist TeTeX's texdoc program in tetex-bin and its TCL front end in the package tktexdoc are useful programs, but their usefulness is severely compromised by working only on documentation included with teTeX. TeTeX (the web2c underneath, actually) is designed to function well as the core of a larger TeX installation, for example a full Debian TeX installation that includes other TeX packages besides teTeX. So the suggestion to make texdoc aware of all Debian TeX documentation is not a misuse of texdoc. Let me take the Debian bibtool package as an example. It is very inconvenient that "texdoc bibtool" (or perusing the menus of tktexdoc) does not give me bibtool's documentation, which is available on my system. I have to go look in /usr/share/doc/bibtool to find that, and before that, I have to type dpkg -S bibtool to find out where to look. A naive user has no reason to distinguish between programs in teTeX proper and those outside it. An experienced user or developer wants to use his brain to store more relevant information. I have one suggestion on how to accomplish it, but I am by no means an expert on Debian development, so there may be better solutions. If each TeX-related package self-identified or registered its documentation files somehow, these files could be linked into a directory indexed by texdoc, i.e., referenced by the default value of $TEXDOCS in teTeX's texmf.cnf. I imagine this would be done by having the .postinst of each TeX package invoke a common script to which it provides a list of documentation files. In the Debian tradition, such a facility for registration could even be independent of its intended first application to texdoc, by which I mean the tetex-doc package itself would register, with the idea that one day perhaps some other program besides texdoc would take advantage of the list of Debian TeX documentation files to provide convenienet user access to them. I've made this suggestion sound complicated because I have described it abstractly, but following it might be as simple as having each TeX package call the following script its postinst while sending a space-separated list of files on stdin (though some complementary action would need to be taken in .postrm): register-dox /usr/share/doc/pkg/foo.dvi /usr/share/doc/pkg/bar.dvi ... register-dox is: #!/bin/sh tetex-doc-dir=/usr/doc/texmf/alien-to-tetex mkdir -p $tetex-doc-dir for f; do fn=$(echo $f | tr / _) # uniquify the filename ln -s $f $tetex-doc-dir/$fn done texhash # or, better, use install-lsr in the loop The corresponding action in .postrm (or wherever) would be something like: rm $tetex-doc-dir/_usr_share_doc_pkg_* texhash -- System Information Debian Release: testing/unstable Architecture: i386 Kernel: Linux beth 2.4.2 #1 Fri Apr 6 10:19:26 EDT 2001 i686 Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C Versions of packages tetex-bin depends on: ii debianutils 1.15 Miscellaneous utilities specific t ii dpkg 1.9.6 Package maintenance system for Deb ii ed 0.2-19 The classic unix line editor ii libc6 2.2.3-5 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an ii libkpathsea3 1.0.7+20001218-4 shared libkpathsea for teTeX ii libpng2 1.0.11-1 PNG library - runtime ii libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2 1:2.95.4-0.010424 The GNU stdc++ library ii libtiff3g 3.5.5-4 Tag Image File Format library ii libwww0 5.3.2-5 The W3C-WWW library. ii libxaw7 4.0.3-4 X Athena widget set library ii perl-base [perl5-base] 5.6.1-5 The Pathologically Eclectic Rubbis ii tetex-base 1.0.2+20000804-8 basic teTeX library files ii xlibs 4.0.3-4 X Window System client libraries ii zlib1g 1:1.1.3-15 compression library - runtime