Re: Gzipped .dvi files?
Hi,
the discussion made me think that we have a preferred on-line
documentation format (HTML) but not a printable one. I think all the
printable documentation should be in Postscript (or .pdf if good free
converters are available), so that every user can print it's manuals
with a minimal effort and installing just one package (ghostscript).
Converting dvi to ps is easy and fast and we have at least
two good previewers (gv and ghostview). They are much better than xdvi.
Ciao.
On 29 Gen, Christian Schwarz wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Jan 1998 Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 29 Jan 1998, Remco Blaakmeer wrote:
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > I found these gzipped .dvi files on my system:
>> >
>> > /usr/doc/chktex/ChkTeX.dvi.gz
>> > /usr/doc/debian-policy/fsstnd/fsstnd-1.2.dvi.gz
>> > /usr/doc/fdutils/Fdutils.dvi.gz
>> > /usr/doc/lde/ext2fs.dvi.gz
>> > /usr/doc/lde/minix.dvi.gz
>> >
>> > Now that the tetex packages don't gzip the .dvi docs, should all .dvi.gz
>> > files be gunzipped? .dvi.gz files are a real pain in the ass, because xdvi
>> > (and probably others) can't read .dvi files from stdin.
>>
>> No. All documentation, that is not short, has to
>> be gzipped. This is requested by policy and was discussed often and
>> thoroughly (sp?). dvi files tend to be rather long, and not everyone needs
>> them. They are no pain in the ass, because you can quite easily do
>>
>> zcat <file>.dvi.gz /tmp/<file>.dvi
>>
>> and then point your favourite dvi viewer to this location.
>
> This all is true, but it's IMHO sub-optimal--and perhaps we can have a
> better solution: In the past, there have been lots of discussions about in
> which format documentation should be provided, whether it should be
> compressed or not, etc. The result has been, that one can't get a
> consensus among the developers for either format.
>
> Thus, a flexible and more general solution has been developed: doc-base.
> That's a package which manages documentation provided by other packages.
> Each package installing a piece of documentation (no matter which
> format--anything except manual pages) will register the documents to
> doc-base through the postinst script.
>
> Then, doc-base could process the documentation files
> automatically--depending on a configuration file which can be changed by
> the local system.
>
> In case of .dvi documentation this would mean: A package installs a
> .dvi.gz file into the usual location (somewhere below /usr/doc/<pkg>) and
> registers these files to doc-base through the postinst script.
[snip]
************************ ____************************************
* Federico Di Gregorio | / *-=$< ;-) TeX Wizard? *
* Debian developer! | / -1 pgp: finger fog@perosa.alpcom.it *
* <friend of penguins> |/ try http://www.debian.org *
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