[tex-live] teTeX: no next release

[Robin Fairbairns]

michael peters wrote:

> > Similarly, TeXLive just copies the files from CTAN into its tree, and
> > only adds some things (like infrastructure, build instructions etc.).
> > There are no changes made, and that is the important thing.
> 
> Agreed.
> It would be nice though if it generated .dvi documentation (like teTeX
> did), as the pdf documentation contributes to the packaging space issues
> on distributions like Fedora. Maybe that should be filed as an RFE by
> distributions it affects (I'm not personally too concerned about it).

there is a definite tension here.  we strongly dis-recommend dvi documentation
on ctan: while it's quite possible to set up a rule for dealing with it, we
don't believe it's transparent to the random browser user, and in any case you
can't guarantee that dvi documentation will run on a user's machine.  we 
(still)
have dvi docs, typically on the fonts/ tree, that won't actually run until 
you've
installed the package -- which rather defeats the purpose (in our world) of
holding the stuff at all.

> I personally like dvi documentation better anyway, it loads faster from
> texdoc on my elderly laptop.

it loads faster on my rather fast workstation, but i tend to keep an acrobat
reader running, which makes the extra delay acceptable.  (for an old enough
laptop, that technique is probably not useful.)

fwiw, i find the argument about source specials rather hard to get my head
around.  how does one find the file that's being referred to, given that it's
typically on someone else's file system, more than likely a system that's
got a different structure than your system.  am i missing something here?
(i don't actually use source specials myself.)

robin