Re: Bug#562325: maint-guide: FTBFS: debiandoc2latexps: ERROR: maint-guide.fr.dvi could not be generated properly

[Osamu Aoki <osamu@debian.org>]

Hi,

On Sat, Jan 09, 2010 at 03:52:02AM +0100, Norbert Preining wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> with all that discussion, is there something we as TeX maintainers
> should contribute now?

Thanks ...

I am a passive maintainer of this completely outdated package.  Despite
what I say below, I will gladly accept any useful and safe patches.

If any one of the TeX maintainers think it is worthwhile for their time
to maintain linux-doc variant's TeX support, please go over
debiandoc-sgml-source to updates its TeX bindings to match current state
of TeX.  That part is the rotten part of this source.  I even welcome
someone capable of TeX to take over this package.

Quite flunkly, I think people should stop using debiandoc-sgml and move
to docbook xml.  This package should only be used for html generation
which does not depend on TeX.  This package is in dead upstream state.

TeX resources are better spent to keep docbook xml conversion tool chain
with UTF-8 encodings.  docbook xml tool chain is quite useful these
days.

Osamu

PS: I will orphan this debiandoc-sgml package after squeeze.  I have
moved my package to use docbook xml these days excluding old
translations which will be removed after squeeze.  I think I did OK as
a quasi-upstream maintainer for updating this source to support UTF-8
sources.

PPS: Maybe I should not have CCed TeX.