[tex-live] TeX Live suggestions

[Robin Fairbairns]

Heiko Oberdiek <oberdiek at uni-freiburg.de> wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 05:07:44PM -0800, Donald Arseneau wrote:
> 
> > Heiko Oberdiek <oberdiek at uni-freiburg.de> writes:
> > 
> > > > and each package in it should come with user documentation, but that's another
> > > > story...
> > > 
> > > A text version could be automatically extracted from the package file,
> > > see appended perl script and saved and provided as "url.txt" that
> > > can then be found and presented by texdoc.
> > 
> > Should I extract the textual documentation and send it to ctan?
> > In some of my other packages I delimit the instructions as so:
> > 
> > %====================== BEGIN INSTRUCTIONS ===========================
> > %====================== END INSTRUCTIONS ===========================
> > 
> > and I should also do that with ulem.  I at one point thought that
> > texdoc would be able to extract on the fly.
> 
> I think, having a .txt file in the TDS:doc// tree is better than
> adding special handling for special files in `texdoc'.
> 
> The current texdoc version defines aliases for url, ulem, ...
> that redirect the request to the .sty file, excerpt from texdoc.cnf:
> 
>   ...
>   alias ulem = ulem.sty
>   alias underscore = underscore.sty
>   alias url = url.sty
>   ...
> 
> > Hmmm, the version on ctan is 2000 whereas my copy is 2004, so some minor
> > fixes went unreleased.
> 
> CTAN:macros/latex/contrib/misc/url.sty has file date 2007/12/10
> (dante server) and identifies itself as "ver 3.3 12-Apr-2006",
> the same version of the copy in TeX-Live 2009.
> 
> > On the other hand, I am not averse to making a crude LaTeX document
> > out of the instructions.  Should I do that and avoid special handling?
> 
> Of course, formatted LaTeX documents are easier to read.
> But naturally it costs time to write them.

indeed.  manuel asked me some time back about this area, and i've
generated a documented version of my own trivial capt-of package[*], and
done some work on generating .tex docs for url.sty and chapterbib.sty

url i've nearly finished, but i'm floundering with chapterbib.

sure, it takes time, but it beats letting the devil find work of an idle
pair of hands...

robin

[*] except i noticed there was something missing in the example
yesterday.