[tex-hyphen] shortdesd, longdesc of hyphen-<language> & CTAN

[Robin Fairbairns]

Mojca Miklavec <mojca.miklavec.lists at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 10:33, Robin Fairbairns wrote:
> >
> > i had understood that shortdesc and longdesc *always* came from ctan, if
> > ctan is the source.
> 
> One can also provide the information in tlpsrc files for TeX Live.
> 
> >> The majority of
> >> packages entirely lacks any description at all.
> >
> > there are certainly ctan packages that lack a description, or even (in
> > some cases) a catalogue entry.  hyphenation patterns often lack
> > description, since the original authors often submitted them without any
> > explanatory text -- in which case the catalogue entry only contains
> > a description if i happen to know something about the background.
> >
> > i can certainly plug in a description for one that's missing it, given
> > some text; if you'll alert me to where you've updated tlpsrc (and hence
> > texlive.tlpdb) i can back-fit it.  what i don't know is whether there is
> > a danger of things not appearing in tlpdb if they're not in the relevant
> > catalogue entry.
> 
> The main problem with current packages is that there are many
> languages that don't have an entry at all and those that do have an
> entry are often referring to an outdated hyphenation file (often
> saying that patterns are outdated).
> 
> So now TeX Live fetches data from descriptions of outdated patterns.
> In order to fix the situation one should first create "visual
> packages" of some kind that would properly refer to the new up-to-date
> hyphenation files.

i see your point.  most of those catalogue entries were created with
little information -- in particular, i never tried the patterns for any
of the entries i created, so i didn't even know what coding was employed
(except in a few cases -- icelandic springs to mind, with its private
oddball encoding -- ages old!).

> But it might be best if I first try to do something and then come back
> with a result, so that we won't start a purely teoretical discussion
> (it might take me less time to implement things than to explain what
> exactly I want to do).

sure (there's a dilbert cartoon about this ... where a waffling
presenter faints when shown an actual implemetation, or something).

it's always good to know when to stop talking and start doing!  ;-)

what i really don't want is diddling my way through texlive.tlpdb to
find descriptions i don't have; a (set of?) tlpsrc files would make my
life more nearly bearable ...

robin