[tex-live] Information/question from the CTAN team

[Manfred Lotz]

Hi all,
Perhaps the following is specifically something which Norbert, Reinhard
or Karl could answer best. 

Anyway!

Back in ancient history the CTAN team decided that each package should
have a README file. Main reason was the Apache web server displays a
README file right away.

Nowadays many authors prefer to deliver a README.md, for instance . We
often have to create symlinks README -> README.md, or also README ->
README.txt in order to make sure our requirement will be satisfied. 

Because of that we had some internal discussions during the TUG 2015
conference about that issue and came to the conclusion that we like to
lower the requirement in a way that a package must contain one or more
of:

README
README.md
README.txt

where the .md is in markdown format, and the other two are text files.
In any case all those files could easily viewed by `less` as the
markdown format isn't really obstructive. (We are aware that markdown
format could contain embedded html, but to be honest a README file
could also contain html or stuff like that)

Our new requirement does embrace the old requirement so that no change
to existing packages have to be made. 

Of course, in cases where the package author updates a package and
s(he) provides a README.md and a symlink README -> README.md the
symlink would be deleted then. 

Question to the TeX Live maintainers: As it could be that this requires
you to change something in your scripts we would like to know if you
have any objections. 


Thanks a lot.


Cheers, Manfred



Kind regards
Manfred Lotz

for the CTAN Team