[tex-live] searching help for files w/o documentation

[George N. White III]

On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 7:06 PM, Philip TAYLOR (Ret'd)
<P.Taylor at rhul.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>
> Robin Fairbairns wrote:
>
>> if the only documentation is the package file itself, i would consider
>> it undocumented.
>
> That seems a somewhat jaundiced view.  Some authors
> take great care to make their code self-documenting.
> (I seem to recall my "Cropmarks.tex" [1] was just such).
>
>> what actual use would be served by making cjknumb.sty available to the
>> ordinary user?
>
> Perhaps little (I've looked at it); but surely Werner
> is not asking for CJKnumb to be special-cased, but rather
> that "the ordinary user" (modern-day English for /hoi polloi/ ?)
> be always offered the .sty (or <whatever>) file if
> no explicit documentation exists.
>
>> i'm with manuel.
>
> I'm not (in this case).

Nor me.

If the .sty file contains documentation, it will be easier to target in a
full text search.    The same people who might really want to read
an undocumented .sty file are probably quite capable of running
something like:  "$ less $(kpsewhich <whatever>.sty)".    There are
many capable full-text indexing systems, although they may differ
in how TeX sources are handled (are TeX markups included in the
index?) so there is not much advantage in adding things to texdoc that
can be done nearly as well by tools already being maintained by others.

-- 
George N. White III <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia