Re: RFC: doc splitting and merge of htmlxml branch

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

Norbert Preining <preining@logic.at> wrote:

> The other patch is the merge of the stuff in the htmlxml branch, BUT BUT
> BUT: I am NOT convinced that this is a good idea to do anyway. jadetex
> and xmltex is quite stabl, in the sense that no changes to the upstream
> are to be expected. I see only complication in taking these under the
> hood of texlive, since we are already maintainers of these two packages
> anyway ... remember, xmltex and jadetex is maintained by
> debian-tex-maint!

Some thoughts:

- Even if jadetex and xmltex don't change, they need to be adjusted to
  changes in the TeX infrastructure; if I'm not mistaken this is
  currently done by using dh_installtex

- which means they might need to be adapted to changes in
  dh_installtex...

- if we integrate them, the transition might cause problems, and we have
  no shortage of more or less interesting and important problems yet...

- on the other hand, we can hope that we will never need to spend half a
  thought on them if they are included in texlive and the transition is
  done

I would summarize this to "don't integrate them" - but there's one more
thing to consider: We have already done the work, and the patches do
apply at the moment.  If we decide that we want to include them in TL
08, they will probably not apply without a considerable amount of
adaptation work.

I'm undecided.  But since I cannot offer any help in doing the
transition, and Norbert seems to be against it, I guess the choice
should be "keep them".

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)