minor editorial comments

[Ulrik Vieth]

I've had another reading of 0.102 this weekend (after having skipped
0.101 due to workload).  Today, there are really only minor comments.


    \item \path|generic|, for input files that are useful across a wide
    range of formats.  Generally, this means any format that uses the
    category codes of Plain \TeX{} and does not rely on any particular
    format (e.g., \path|null.tex|, \path|paths.sty|).  This is in contrast
                                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This should be \path|path.sty| without s.  (I wonder how long this error
has been around without anyone noticing.)
       

    \item \path|public|, for freely redistributable fonts where the supplier
    neither (1)~requested their own directory (as with, e.g., \path|ams|),
    nor (2)~made a great number of fonts (e.g., \path|adobe|).  It does not
    contain all freely distributable fonts, nor are all files therein
    legally public domain.        

I liked the previous wording better.  This almost sounds as if none of
the files in public were legally public domain.  I think it shold be
made clearer that they are _not necessarily_ public domain, but they 
may well be in some cases.


    Two naming strategies are commonly used to identify the resolution of
    bitmap font files.  On systems that allow long filenames (and in the
    original \MF{} program itself), the the resolution is included in the
                                   ^^^^^^^   
Anyone knows a good spell checker which would catch somthing like that?


    \item[\replaceable{mode}] is a name which identifies the device type
    (examples: \path|cx|, \path|gsftopk|, \path|ljfour|).  Usually, this is
    the name of the \MF{} mode used to build the \path|PK| file.

It might not be a good idea to use |gsftopk| as an example for mode
before it is explained (in the next paragraph) that program names 
are used as such.  Simply |cx| and |ljfour| should be enough here.


    \item \path|base|, for the standard additional \MF{} macro files as
                               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    described in \citetitle{The \MF{}book}, such as \path|plain.mf| and
    \path|expr.mf|.

``standard addtional'' may sound like a contradiction since ``additional''
might imply ``non-standard''.  I suggest dropping ``additional'' here.


    \path|texmf/bibtex/bib/|\replaceable{package}\path|/|
    \path|texmf/bibtex/bst/|\replaceable{package}\path|/|

There should be a line break between these two items.


    The \abbr{TDS} specifies that these additional documentation files shall
    be stored in a structure that parallels to some extent the
    \path|fonts| and \path|macros| directories, as follows:
                     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
What \path|macros| directory?  We don't have one anymore for quite a
long time now.  Should that be simply ``and \TeX{} macros directories''
(without using \path)?


(the summary figure)
  mft/              \application{MFT} inputs (e.g., \path|plain.mft|)
                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I think the traditional way for denoting MFT is uppercase typewriter type 
just like INITEX, etc. (see mft.web).  Of course, that would be inconsistent
with other instances of applications, but well, that's the tradition.


  tex/              \TeX{} input files
  . <format>/       name of a format (e.g., \path|plain|)
  . . base/         base distribution for format (e.g., \path|plain.tex|)
  . . misc/         single-file packages (e.g., \path|webmac.tex|)
                                                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Might there be a better example for tex/<format>/misc?  I would have
put webmac.tex into tex/plain/base, since it's distributed together
with Plain in Knuth's tex95.tar.gz/dist/lib.

  . . <package>/    name of a package (e.g., \path|graphics|, \path|nfss|)
                                                              ^^^^^^^^^^^
What |nfss| package?  |psnfss| or |mfnfss| might be a good examples,
but simply |nfss| doesn't exist.


(the doc figure)
  <format>/       name of a format
  . base/         for the base format
  . misc/         for single-file package documentation
  . <package>/    for \emphasis{package} (\path|amslatex|, etc.)
                                          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This is a bad example since |amslatex| is special case which goes
under |ams| as shown a few lines above in the figure.  In principle, 
there should be plenty of packages to choose for an example here,
however, since |latex| is listed explicitely further down, this 
should  better be a non-LaTeX package example.


(web2c-7.0 structure)
    \begin{description}
    \item{executables in} \replaceable{prefix}\path|/bin|
    \item{man pages in} \replaceable{prefix}\path|/man|
    \item{info files in} \replaceable{prefix}\path|/info|
    \item{\path|libkpathsea.*| in} \replaceable{prefix}\path|/lib|
    \item{\abbr{TDS} root is} \replaceable{prefix}\path|/share/texmf|
    \end{description}

Wouldn't it be clearer to transform this into a tdsSummary envrionment:

  <prefix>/       installation root (e.g. \path|/usr/local|)
  . bin/	  executables
  . man/          man pages
  . info/         info files
  . lib/          libraries (\path|libkpathsea.*|)
  . share/
  . . texmf/      TDS root


    This improves the maintainability of the font tree, since all files
    comprising a given typeface are in one place, but unless all the
    programs that search this tree employ some form of caching, there are
    serious performance concerns.  For example, in order to find a
    \path|TFM| file, the simplest implementation would require \TeX{} to
    ^^^^^^^^^
lowercasifiy |TFM| for consistency,  after you've already done this to |pk|


That's it for today. We're getting closer, it appears.

Cheers, Ulrik.

P.S. Why does it always take so long to write up this feedback after
marking it on paper?