Bug#51869: tetex-base: Request for tetex-base-doc
On Thu, Oct 23, 2003 at 01:47:30PM +0200, Frank Küster wrote:
> So,
>
> now that I made all that mess about it, I should probably care about
> those bugs.
*grin*
[...]
> 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:
>
[...]
> - 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 outdated versions of the documentation together with updated class and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.
Okay...
For the legal part:
The distribution as a whole should contain the relevant
files, but the user might have the option of not installing
some things (rpm has a --do-not-install-docs option for
example)
For the rest:
I guess, the right thing to do is:
Have "Recommends: tetex-xxx-doc" or "Recommends:
tetex-xxx-doc (= Version)" in the package description of
tetex-xxx.
Recommends means: "You should install this, otherwise
expect problems".
(and don't tell me, that apt-get doesn't handle Recommends
currently. That's apt's problem, not tetex's.)
And there are valid reasons for not installing the docs for
tetex.
One being "servers", where people just put their final
stuff, process it and send it to the high quality printers
or so. (I do that on occassion)
Next being people who prefer to read the sources (classes,
etc) directly to understand what's going on. Those people
usualy do not read the docs directly.
> 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.
Further doc-splitting might not be the right option, but
keeping some xxx-doc seems a good thing, using the correct
package-methods.
If 99994 gets closed again for already known valid reasons,
we should move this discussion to 51869.
Elrond
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