[tex-live] Stop providing a4.sty and a4wide.sty for texlive-2009

[Robin Fairbairns]

Philipp Stephani <st_philipp at yahoo.de> wrote:

> Robin Fairbairns schrieb:
> > Frank Küster <frank at kuesterei.ch> wrote:
> > 
> >> Robin Fairbairns <Robin.Fairbairns at cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> >>
> >>> the name a4.sty itself appears [used to appear] once on ctan:
> >>>   macros/latex209/contrib/misc/a4.sty
> >>> and i've moved that one (and the corresponding a4wide.sty) to
> >>> ctan:obsolete.  such a move makes little change to the way people will
> >>> view the packages, but it does provide a reference point for explaining
> >>> why those particular files are unreliable.
> >> Couldn't we move those files to a collection obsolete, then?
> > 
> > the 2.09 files, sure; but i didn't think texlive holds them.
> > 
> > there are several a4.sty in texlive; one in ntgclass, and several in
> > kopka
> > 
> > i wouldn't split ntgclass.
> 
> Question: Does anyone actually use ntgclass any more? I've done a web
> search as well as a Google Code search, and I've found that the usage of
> these classes isn't too widespread.

i do, occasionally.

>  [search results omitted]

i've never submitted anything of mine, in latex, anywhere other than
ctan.

> and the last update to the NTG classes was around 2004. Are these
> classes still in active development and usage?

i doubt they're under development, given that i _know_ that one of the
credited authors is totally inactive on one of the other packages he
maintains.

afaik, they're the only published set of classes that contains classes
(artikel3 and rapport3) with \parindent=0pt and \parskip\ne0pt.

as you've no doubt deduced, i would argue against removing the classes
from any distribution.

robin