[texdoc] Bug#557861: texdoc.tlu: Please enable compressed file support (support_zipped)

[Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard]

On 03/01/2010 08:59, Norbert Preining wrote:
> On So, 03 Jan 2010, Jean-Sébastien Trottier wrote:
>> Like I said before, it "worked perfectly" by enabling support_zipped
>> (false->true) in this script:
>>     /usr/share/texmf-texlive/scripts/texdoc/constants.tlu
> 
> Hehe, yes, there it works.
> 
Yep, that's how it was intended, though I realise now it wasn't that clear.

>> Indeed, I see the problem: support_zipped is not an "option" but
>> a constant. To get it to easily fake it as an option you need to add it
>> to known_options (gets you passed the warning) and also create a special
>> case in set_config_element (to change the constant).
> 
> The set_config_element part I didn't check.
> 
Please, if you think support_zipped should be turned into a regular option, tell
me and I will do it (if your arguments seem good to me), rather than hacking the
code on tour side :-)

>> Now, is there a good reason to make it an option? Having it enabled all
>> the time *should* not cause any issues with non-zipped documentation.
> 
> I leave that to Manuel to answer.
> 
Hum, googd question. At some poiny, I wasn't sure if it was still used, so
de-activating it by default was a good way to know if I should keep it. Now I'm
sure at least two distros are using it.

Then, as Norbert points out, upstream TL doesn't ship compressed doc, so it is
sort of useless code here. OTOH, I shouldn't hurt to enable it here.

The real problem is that it doesn't work on windows, and I don't really want to
spend time making it work here, since AFAIK it is not used in this context. So I
feel a little bit incomfortable about activating something that cannot work
cross-platform (since texdoc obviously tries to be cross-platform).

I'm open to comments.

>> I think you should just set it to true in constants.tlu and remove it
>> from texdoc.cnf.
> 
Currently, it has nothing to do in texdoc.cnf :-)

> Could be done, but then, upstream TeX Live doe snot distribute
> any gzipped documetnation, and also the TeX Live packages in Debian
> don't have zipped (gz) documentaiton (pdf is already compressed), but
> other packages have them ...
> 
Precisely.

> Thanks for the patch.
> 
Norbert, please don't hesitate to ask me if you think something should be
changed in texdoc (or its documentation).

> Since I will wait for the texlive to testing transition before doing
> another upload it will have to wait some days (if nothing bad happens
> 6 days)
> 
Unrelated, but I'm glad to hear that TL09 should soon hit testing (hence be in
the next stable). Fingers crossed.

Manuel.