[tex-live] merging texmf-doc into texmf-dist

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 18 February 2009 Heiko Oberdiek wrote:

 > On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 03:09:17AM +0100, Reinhard Kotucha wrote:
 > 
 >> At the moment, the directory structure is quite nice:
 >> 
 >>   texmf-dist/doc/<engine> 
 >>   texmf-doc/doc/<language> 
 >> 
 >> Do you intend to add an extra directory?  What I have in mind is
 >> something like:
 >> 
 >>   texmf-dist/doc/lang/<language>
 >> 
 >> Otherwise the result would be
 >> 
 >>   texmf-dist/doc/alatex
 >>   texmf-dist/doc/aleph
 >>   texmf-dist/doc/amstex
 >>   texmf-dist/doc/bibtex
 >>   texmf-dist/doc/bulgarian
 >>   texmf-dist/doc/chinese
 >>   texmf-dist/doc/context
 >>   texmf-dist/doc/cslatex
 >>   texmf-dist/doc/czechslovak
 >>   texmf-dist/doc/dutch
 >>   texmf-dist/doc/english
 >>   texmf-dist/doc/eplain
 >>   texmf-dist/doc/epspdf
 >>   texmf-dist/doc/etex
 >>   texmf-dist/doc/finnish
 >>   ...
  
 > That isn't much better than before.
 > Example, an user is interested in "lshort", then he wouldn't want to
 > search texmf-dist/doc/*/, texmf-dist/doc/english/*/,
 > and other languages he knows. Therefore I think, the language directory
 > should be put at the end:
 >   texmf-dist/doc/lshort/english/...
 > Then the user sees all language versions of a package at first glance
 > and can match them with his language skills.

Heiko, I agree with you that this is better.  However, if you only
have the stuff in texmf-doc in mind, this can be done easily.  But
some macro packages might provide documentation in different
languages too.  Changing the directory structure of texmf-dist is
definitely an enourmous amount of work and I don't know who should do
that.  Because not all packages on CTAN are actively maintained any
more, we can't rely on the authors.

The question is whether the information about the language in which a
particular file is written should be stored in the file system or in
the catalogue.  I prefer the latter, for two reasons:

  1. Changing the file system is an enourmous amount of work.

  2. Extending the catalogue could be done step by step.  Maybe a
     program which depends on the catalogue does not always behave
     optimally, but everybody can help to improve the catalogue.

Do you come to Vienna?  Would be great.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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