Bug#99994: tetex-base: Request for tetex-base-doc
So,
now that I made all that mess about it, I should probably care about
those bugs.
russell@coker.com.au wrote:
> Package: tetex-base
> Version: 1.0.2+20000804-7
> Severity: wishlist
>
> The package tetex-base has 4 megs of data in /usr/share/doc/texmf.
As Elrond pointed out, this has been changed. The change must have been
even before woody, according to version numbers, but I can't find a
changelog entry. Anyway, now tetex-base only contains some empty
directories under /usr/share/doc/texmf and 7 files, 128k total.
Therefore I think that this bug (99994) should have been closed long
ago. Will you, Russell (or is this your last name?) close it (by sending
mail to 99994-done@bugs.debian.org)?
Anyway, let me make some remarks on splitting docs off:
> I believe
> that it would be better if this was moved into a separate package. One reason
> for doing so is that there's a lot of data that most people won't need, another
> is that 13M packages are difficult to deal with (over an hour for downloading
> via modem).
I agree that further splitting of the tetex packages is a worthwile
goal. However, I strongly object to splitting of docs. Rather, I suggest
to merge tetex-doc with base and extra, respectively, and then splitting
again, according to a new scheme. There are two reasons for this:
- For a program suite like TeX, it is not reasonable to split of user
documentation. For server and basic stuff (apache-doc, samba-doc,
bash-doc etc.) things are different: You might well install apache on
the server and apache-doc on your workplace machine. But TeX/LaTeX
documents are usually written where they first will be "compiled".
Therefore the documentation should be there.
If you look into mailing lists or newsgroups relating to TeX, you will
find that usually posters are expected to have read the documentation
of packages used. Experts don't like to read the docs to newbies. Bad
thing if the newbies (or not-so-new-bies) can't find the documentation
because they're in a separate package (that isn't even suggested by
tetex-base or tetex-extra).
- In many cases, licenses forbid distribution of LaTeX packages without
their documentation,
e.g. /usr/share/texmf/doc/latex/koma-script/LEGAL.TXT.gz (second
paragraph, DISTRIBUTION). The purpose of this is exactly what I wrote
above. Markus Kohm, the author of koma-script, receives a lot of bug
reports that aren't really bugs. Instead they come from people using
outdated versions of the documentation together with updated class and
package files. He uses to lament that Debian users make up a major
part of these people, because they install tetex-extra without
tetex-doc and then take the first KOMA-Script guide they find on the
net.
No, I don't have a good proposition how to exactly split tetex (btw. the
same license issues make separation of tetex-src problematic), not
yet. But further splitting of docs is clearly not the way to go.
Thank you, Frank
--
Frank Küster, Biozentrum der Univ. Basel
Abt. Biophysikalische Chemie
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