[tex-live] Undocumented packages

[Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard]

Hi,

Philipp Stephani a écrit :
> I've had a script generate a huge list of packages for which texdoc
> doesn't find documentation.

I did so some time ago, too.

> If you want, I'll start going through that
> list to manually find the missing docs.

Well, my conclusion from the size of the list was that it is probably
better to try improving texdoc's general mechanisms first, so that the
list of aliases to maintain manually doesn't become too huge.

Eg, texdoc could use the TeX Live database to identify the TL package
containing a given .sty file, end look for documentation for this .sty
in the docfiles of this TLP.

> Fortunately, in almost all cases
> the documentation does exist in obscure places. I'm unsure whether the
> goal of the texdoc project is to allow access to all available
> documentation,

More precisely, the first main goal of texdoc is that, for every
<name>.sty or <name>.cls file that can be used by a "end user" (as
opposed to a macro writer) as an argument to \usepackage or
\documentclass), texdoc <name> returns something sensible (ideally, all
relevant results and even more ideally, only relevant results).

I'm aware that it is a very LaTeX-centred definition. Of course there
are other goals, like giving access to more developper-oriented
documentation, general documentation like latex-help-ptr, etc.

> but my list could be a starting point.

It could be very useful indeed, but I don't want to include all of it as
aliases right now, as explained above. I think the best way for you to
help with this, if you want to (and your help would be very welcome
indeed) is either to wait a bit for a new version of texdoc (should take
a few week-ends) before you make the list, or (may be even better), for
each entry in the list, think how texdoc could have guessed the result
in an algorithmic way, so that I can add theses heuristics later and
reduce the amount of manual work needed.


> 2sidedoc: private, only used by relenc.tex

By the way, in the long run I'd like to have coverage tests run
routinely, and I'll need an exclusion list, so such infomartion is
interesting. How did you find it?

> PPRalcatel: prosper-doc
> PPRalienglow: prosper-doc
> PPRarabic: arabi/user_guide
> PPRautumn: prosper-doc
> PPRazure: prosper-doc
> PPRblends: prosper-doc
> PPRcapsules: prosper-doc
> PPRcontemporain: prosper-doc
> PPRcorners: prosper-doc
> PPRdarkblue: prosper-doc
> PPRdefault: prosper-doc
> PPRframes: prosper-doc
> PPRfyma: prosper-doc
> PPRgyom: prosper-doc
> PPRlignesbleues: prosper-doc
> PPRmancini: prosper-doc
> PPRnuancegris: prosper-doc
> PPRprettybox: prosper-doc
> PPRrico: prosper-doc
> PPRserpaggi: prosper-doc
> PPRthomasd: prosper-doc
> PPRtroispoints: prosper-doc
> PPRwhitecross: prosper-doc
> PPRwinter: prosper-doc
> PPRwj: prosper-doc

By the way, this is a perfect example where looking in the TLPDB would
allow texdoc to make the (otherwise non-obvious) association. (It would
probably find NEWS, FAQ README, prosper-doc.pdf, prosper-tour.pdf, and
the scoring rules (yet to be inmplemented) should give propsper-doc.pdf
first as it is pdf and contains the keyword "doc").


Thanks very much for your list and your offer to complete it. If you
want to discuss texdoc development further (and your suggestions are
welcome), I guess we could move to the texdoc mailing list.

Manuel.