[tex-live] your eqexam package

Robin Fairbairns Robin.Fairbairns at cl.cam.ac.uk
Fri Jul 9 12:44:57 CEST 2010


Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd) <P.Taylor at rhul.ac.uk> wrote:

> T T wrote:
> Master/tlpkg/bin/tl-update-docindex in our repository.
> >
> >> 2) What would you define as the "source" for the
> >>    attached file [1] ?  In my opinion, the "source"
> >>    is an evanescent sequence of keystrokes, since
> >>    there is no physical copy other than the PDF.
> >>
> >> [1] This file was created in Open Office Writer,
> >>     and the PDF generated by OOW's "Export as PDF".
> >
> > Oh, please Phil, don't make it harder than it is.  The source is not
> > some mythical animal no one has ever seen.  If you use OOWriter to
> > produce the PDF, then the .odt file is the source.  If you would
> > hand-craft that PDF, then the PDF is the source.  I don't think there
> > is any ambiguity here (at least I don't see it).
> 
> I'm not trying to "make it harder than it is" : I'm trying
> to point out that the "source" for a document is an
> extraordinarily hard thing to define, and that we must
> therefore be flexible in terms of our requirements rather
> than rigid as at present.

i didn't bother to look at your "evanescent" pdf file, but i would claim
that if it was as substantial as one of don's or ulrike's documents, and
_didn't_ have a source so that it could be regenerated after bugs were
discovered, then it would hardly be worth maintaining on ctan, let alone
tl.

> There /is/ no .odt file for
> the PDF which I circulated, nor has there ever been,
> nor will there ever be : it is clearly possible to go
> from an evanescent sequence of keystrokes to a final
> PDF file without there ever being a physical instantiation
> of a corresponding source document.

we're not talking about trivia here.  nor about readme files.

ha ha.

> Don Story and Ulrike Fisher's work is clearly of interest
> and benefit to the TeX community : if they prefer to
> offer only a final PDF rather than their own personal
> sources for that PDF, then that should (IMHO) be more
> than sufficient to allow the inclusion of their work
> in TeX Live.

there's no problem with including their work, just so long as there's
source.  if they choose not to provide the source of the documentation,
then the package will make it to tl without the documentation.  the
documentation is still available to people with net access: this is less
than totally satisfactory, but it's not impossible.

i think that only _one_ member of this list has proposed removing all
such packages from tl.  it would be a pity if tl were to go down that
route, imo, and i don't believe it's likely to happen.

don story decided (without any prompting) to remove one package from tl
because its documentation wouldn't be included (this was in a discussion
with the ctan list).  i agree i made a mistake, at that point, by
pointing out that all his packages were in this state.

robin the clumsy




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