[tex-live] Non-PDF documentation

Robin Fairbairns Robin.Fairbairns at cl.cam.ac.uk
Tue Feb 2 10:45:22 CET 2010


Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard <mpg at elzevir.fr> wrote:

> Philipp Stephani a écrit :
> > Am 01.02.2010 um 22:12 schrieb Zdenek Wagner:
> > 
> >> Maybe users should be able to set in tlmgr or elsewhere, whether they 
> >> prefer DVI or PDF if both are available.
> > 
> > This is already possible with the existing texdoc (variable ext_list in
> > texdoc.cnf). There is not need to add another option to the already overly
> > complex tlmgr.
> 
> Correct, but OTOH packages seldom come with both dvi and pdf documentation in
> TL, so I doubt this option is so usefull in practice. Anyway, it exists indeed.

aiui, tl package making _doesn't_ involve building docs -- they come
from ctan, along with the package.

only the most eccentric die-hards would suggest that dvi is an
appropriate format for sites that are browsable (istr someone had
configured this lab's mosaic so's it could bring up xdvi, but i've not
seen it since such facilities.  afaik no-one's bothered to provide a
firefox- (or any other browser-) embeddable dvi reader.

given that, since ctan wants its holdings to be browsable, we have given
up on dvi docs; the only doc formats we accept in uploads are plain text
and pdf.

so any docs that come from ctan are in pdf -- in the sense that i know
of no exceptions.  (when i come across a package that's in need of docs,
i usually just generate the pdf and install it.  this is advertised ctan
policy.)

robin



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