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Bug#105830: marked as done (Please provide a method for packages to register themselves to texdoctk)

Your message dated Wed, 11 Jul 2012 22:08:05 +0200
with message-id <87hatedpsq.fsf@riesling.miltenberg.kuesterei.ch>
and subject line TeXdocTK is dead
has caused the Debian Bug report #105830,
regarding Please provide a method for packages to register themselves to texdoctk
to be marked as done.

This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.

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-- 
105830: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=105830
Debian Bug Tracking System
Contact owner@bugs.debian.org with problems
--- Begin Message --- 
Package: tetex-bin
Version: 1.0.7+20001218-4
Severity: wishlist

TeTeX's texdoc program in tetex-bin and its TCL front end in the package
tktexdoc are useful programs, but their usefulness is severely compromised by
working only on documentation included with teTeX.  TeTeX (the web2c
underneath, actually) is designed to function well as the core of a larger TeX
installation, for example a full Debian TeX installation that includes other
TeX packages besides teTeX.  So the suggestion to make texdoc aware of all
Debian TeX documentation is not a misuse of texdoc.

Let me take the Debian bibtool package as an example.  It is very inconvenient
that "texdoc bibtool" (or perusing the menus of tktexdoc) does not give me
bibtool's documentation, which is available on my system.  I have to go look in
/usr/share/doc/bibtool to find that, and before that, I have to type dpkg -S
bibtool to find out where to look.  A naive user has no reason to distinguish
between programs in teTeX proper and those outside it.  An experienced user or
developer wants to use his brain to store more relevant information.

I have one suggestion on how to accomplish it, but I am by no means an expert
on Debian development, so there may be better solutions.  If each TeX-related
package self-identified or registered its documentation files somehow, these
files could be linked into a directory indexed by texdoc, i.e., referenced by
the default value of $TEXDOCS in teTeX's texmf.cnf.  I imagine this would be
done by having the .postinst of each TeX package invoke a common script to
which it provides a list of documentation files.

In the Debian tradition, such a facility for registration could even be
independent of its intended first application to texdoc, by which I mean the
tetex-doc package itself would register, with the idea that one day perhaps
some other program besides texdoc would take advantage of the list of Debian
TeX documentation files to provide convenienet user access to them.

I've made this suggestion sound complicated because I have described it
abstractly, but following it might be as simple as having each TeX package call
the following script its postinst while sending a space-separated list of files
on stdin (though some complementary action would need to be taken in .postrm):

  register-dox /usr/share/doc/pkg/foo.dvi /usr/share/doc/pkg/bar.dvi

... register-dox is:

  #!/bin/sh
     
  tetex-doc-dir=/usr/doc/texmf/alien-to-tetex
  mkdir -p $tetex-doc-dir

  for f; do
    fn=$(echo $f | tr / _) # uniquify the filename
    ln -s $f $tetex-doc-dir/$fn
  done
  texhash # or, better, use install-lsr in the loop

The corresponding action in .postrm (or wherever) would be something like:

  rm $tetex-doc-dir/_usr_share_doc_pkg_*
  texhash


-- System Information
Debian Release: testing/unstable
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux beth 2.4.2 #1 Fri Apr 6 10:19:26 EDT 2001 i686
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C

Versions of packages tetex-bin depends on:
ii  debianutils            1.15              Miscellaneous utilities specific t
ii  dpkg                   1.9.6             Package maintenance system for Deb
ii  ed                     0.2-19            The classic unix line editor      
ii  libc6                  2.2.3-5           GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii  libkpathsea3           1.0.7+20001218-4  shared libkpathsea for teTeX      
ii  libpng2                1.0.11-1          PNG library - runtime             
ii  libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2 1:2.95.4-0.010424 The GNU stdc++ library            
ii  libtiff3g              3.5.5-4           Tag Image File Format library     
ii  libwww0                5.3.2-5           The W3C-WWW library.              
ii  libxaw7                4.0.3-4           X Athena widget set library       
ii  perl-base [perl5-base] 5.6.1-5           The Pathologically Eclectic Rubbis
ii  tetex-base             1.0.2+20000804-8  basic teTeX library files         
ii  xlibs                  4.0.3-4           X Window System client libraries  
ii  zlib1g                 1:1.1.3-15        compression library - runtime

--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message --- 
Hi,

this bug is about improving texdoctk.  However, the texdoc script is no
longer developed, and texdoc is a usable replacement.  

It doesn't make sense to keep a wishlist bug open for a legacy script,
therefore closing.

Regards, Frank

--- End Message ---
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