texdoc.php in Debian: some suggestions

[frank <frank@kuesterei.ch>]

Dear Joao,

I have tested your texdoc.php script with teTeX 3.0 in Debian, and I
like it very much.  I've got one question or suggestion, though.

In Debian, /usr/share/doc/<anything> is aways accessible as
http://localhost/doc/anything if a web server is installed, therefore
the easiest way to access texdoc.php would be as
http://localhost/doc/texmf/texdoc.php.  However, with the current
configuration it does not find the individual documentation files,
because the root is not /texmf/doc/.., but /doc/texmf.

While I was looking at config.php to write a Debian-specific patch, I
noticed that the TEXMF paths, e.g. texmf-local, are hard-wired into the
script.  No problem, I can replace them hard-wired with the
Debian-specific values (/usr/local/share/texmf, e.g.), but it would be
cool if the script would simply call kpsewhich to get the paths,
wouldn't it?

In the texmftrees defined, you have 'dist' for TEXMFDIST and '' for
TEXMFMAIN; is there any meaning behind this?  Can we simply add
additional trees there - and does this make any sense if there are only
additional TeX input files in these trees, while the documentation is
always in (or symlinked to) the pre-defined trees?  And can we remove
texmf-dist (it's actually not used in Debian)?

One last question - I'm sure I can find out be trial and error, but if
you have time, please explain to me why there are so many double dots in
config.php:

$texmftrees['fs'] = array( 'dist' => '../../../texmf-dist/' ,
			  '' => '../../../texmf/',
                          'local' => '../../../texmf-local/');

The script is run as /usr/share/doc/texmf/texdoc.php here, so
../../../texmf seems to correspond to /usr/texmf.  

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer