A package I will upload to CTAN
Dear tex-maintainers,
I'writing you because I would like to have some clarification regarding
what do you do with a package to include it in the Debian TexLive
distribution...
Being more clear, I will upload the update of a package I wrote
(factura.cls). This is a major update that includes everything within a
.dtx file (except README). This .dtx file generates the pdf
documentation, the package files (.cls and .def), and 10 .tex examples.
When we upload a package to CTAN, they forces us to send the
documentation in the compiled form (pdf), so they don't use the dtx to
generate the documentation.
1) I would like to know if Debian (which is what I use) recompiles the
pdf documentation in some circumstances.
Trying to answer this question by myself, I did download two packages
from CTAN: everyshi.zip and atbegshi.zip. The documentation atbegshi.pdf
in Debian is exactly the same included in atbegshi.zip downloaded from
CTAN, _but_ that's not the case of everyshi.pdf.
The file downloaded from CTAN has "\OnlyDescription" and the version in
Debian includes the Implementation, so Debian did modify everyshi.dtx to
include the Implementation. Panik :-) Here arises my second question:
2) Will Debian recompile my package to include the Implementation in the
documentation? I'm currently using \OnlyDescription.
The problem is that the documentation includes a sample taken from an
example.tex that must be compiled before, and if it isn't present, only
a warning is issued at the compilation time. Let me be more clear again:
One of the .tex examples that the .dtx generates (let's call it
example.tex in advance) is a full beautiful example of an invoice. This
example is used as a sample in the documentation, so the potential users
will see what the class is able to to.
The way I'm including this sample is:
\IfFileExists{example.pdf}{\includegraphics{example.pdf}}{\message{LaTeX
warning: Example not found; you must compile it before}}
This way, if example.pdf doesn't exist, only a warning is issued.
The procedure to do all the right way is:
pdflatex factura.dtx
pdflatex example.tex
pdflatex factura.dtx
I did create a Makefile to do _everything_ good... But:
3) Debian TeX maintainers relies on Makefiles included in packages? I
think no because of potential security risks, and it is a rare condition
that a package includes a Makefile.
Summing up, there is only three questions. :-)
Thanks in advance
All the best,
Emilio.
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