[tex-live] TeXlive for Debian/Sarge and upward - version 2005.08.24-1 online

[Frank Küster]

karl at freefriends.org (Karl Berry) wrote:

>     "texinfo.tex" file of it's own and it's version is 1999-09-25.10. So
>
> If the current octave documentation fails with the *current* texinfo.tex
> (ftp://tug.org/tex/texinfo.tex), please report it to
> bug-texinfo at gnu.org, with the actual error messages and a pointer to
> where I can get the sources, etc.
>
> Meanwhile, you might mention to the octave maintainers that their
> texinfo.tex is woefully out of date.  If there is some reason why they
> are choosing not to update, then I'd like to discuss it with them.  The
> primary goal of texinfo.tex is to be useful for GNU packages like
> Octave, after all.

Why do these packages ship texinfo.tex at all?  For it to be actually
usefull, one has to install a TeX system anyway - why not also require
to install texinfo?

> I don't think this is related to the etex vs. tex vs. pdfetex question,
> unless you specifically tested it, and the same .texi+texinfo.tex works
> with tex and fails with etex.  It didn't sound like you did that.

I found the same in the Debian package of GNU make
(http://bugs.debian.org/322353), and the reason was that some ancient
texinfo version tested whether \pdfoutput is defined and set it to 1 if
yes.  The bug is fixed in Debian, and I guess upstream has been informed.

Regards, Frank

-- 
Frank Küster
Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer