[tex-live] Fwd: xindy bugs + fixes (xindy.sty, perl scripts)

[Zdenek Wagner]

2009/3/18 Norbert Preining <preining at logic.at>:
> Hi Zdenek,
>
> On Mi, 18 Mär 2009, Zdenek Wagner wrote:
>> I tried to contact Andreas Schlechte and Roger Kehr but probably the
>> e-mail addresses given in the files are old and no longer working. I
>> sent the mail to the xindy-discuss list but with no response. Maybe
>> someone of you knows whom to contact.
>
> Hmm, I forwarded your email to Jörg Sommer who is the maintainer of the
> Debian xindy package, maybe he knows more.
>
>> xindy is included in TeX Live 2008 but xindy.sty is not although it
>> looks very useful. However, I managed to find xindy.sty only in the
>> CVS repository.
>> If it helps and if the authors agree, I can package it for inclusion in TL.
>
> I would suggest that you send a diff against current TL (if possible, ie
> if you have a checkout of our svn repo), otherwise simply of all the
> files you have changed, and I will merge them into our distribution.
> I guess we can simply add
>        texmf/tex/latex/xindy/xindy.sty

xindy.sty is generated from xindy.ins and xindy.dtx so that it is even
possible to make its documentation in PDF.

> (I am a bit surprised that xindy has all its file in texmf and not
> texmf-dist).
>
It is due to the way how xindy.pl searches modules. I think that the
current implementation is counter-productive. Xindy can use modules
with merge rules, sort rules etc. A user can make small reusable
modules and pick some of them for a particular document. I would store
such local modules under texmf-local/xindy or $HOME/texmf/xindy but
xindy.pl does not look there, everything must be stored in
XXXX/texmf/xindy so that the local modifications will be lost after
the next TL release will be installed. I would suggest to search in
some path as $TEXMFMAIN/xindy, it is possible to call kpsewhich from
xindy.pl and if kpsewhich cannot be located, use the currently
hard-wired paths.

Wouldn't be better to create a vendor branch in the TL repository and
import the original xindy files there? If we make local modifications
for TL and xindy maintainers later make some changes in their CVS, it
will be easier to maintain.

> Best wishes
>
> Norbert
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Dr. Norbert Preining <preining at logic.at>        Vienna University of Technology
> Debian Developer <preining at debian.org>                         Debian TeX Group
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-- 
Zdeněk Wagner
http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz