[tex-live] doc trees questions

[Karl Berry]

    1. do we have any list of documentation files to be updated from the 
       sources in many texmf trees? 

Not that I know of :(.

       Eg. NEWS and pdf-syntax.txt are updated
       only in the source tree.

Hartmut has actually prepared a new version of the pdftex manual,
including pdf-syntaxt.txt.  I'll take care of checking that in when it
is stable.

   texmf/doc/ contains doc files copied or prepared from the sources,
     right? The documentation here mostly describes the programs, like
     bibtex8, dvips, etc. and more general web2c and kpathsea.

Right.

And texmf-dist contains documentation for the packages in texmf-dist,
and texmf-doc contains standalone documentation not part of any other
package.  That's the theory.  Implementation is, as always, imperfect.

   texmf-dist/doc/aleph and bibtex (but they are also programs).

The Aleph files should definitely be moved to texmf/doc, in my opinion.

Bibtex, hmm.  The base/ files seem like they should be moved to texmf.
(BTW, I just made btxhak.pdf and btxdoc.pdf.)

But the gost files don't seem like they belong in texmf.  Perhaps they
should be in texmf-dist/doc/latex/gost, instead of anything/bibtex?
How does that sound?

   texmf-doc/doc/pdftex/ contains 3 files copied from the source tree 
     (NEWS, README and pdf-syntax.txt, not yet updated).
     I think that those files should be consequently in texmf/doc/
     or the whole pdftex/ should be rather moved to texmf-dist/doc/

Moving all of texmf-doc/doc/english/pdftex to texmf/doc/pdftex (not
texmf-dist) sounds ok to me.  It is essentially documentation that comes
with the distribution.

    Last thing: texmf-doc/ tree isn't declared in $TEXMF (texmf.cnf), so
    texdoctk has no chance finding the files. I'm affraid that all
    texmf* trees should be declared at least in texdocrc.defaults. Am I right?

I've never used texdoctk, but what you say sounds plausible.  I don't
*think* we want to add texmf-doc into $TEXMF ... but maybe we should.

texdoctk searches in doc/ subtrees?  (Unlike everything else?)

If you'd like to move this stuff around, that would be great.

Thanks always,
karl