[tex-live] tds

[Heiko Oberdiek]

On Mon, Jun 16, 2008 at 01:41:43PM -0500, Karl Berry wrote:

>     I can't see, why pdftex is in texmf, whereas
>         its successor luatex is in texmf-dist?
> 
> I won't bore you with the historical circumstances that led to this.
> I moved pdftex to texmf-dist.  Thanks.

Thanks.

> I don't think it's worth investing time in debating which things end up
> in which tree.  There is no one right answer.  The only rational way to
> find documentation is to search via texdoc/locate/whatever, not browse

Both texdoc and locate require the name of the documentation and
they will not show a file listing with all relevant documentation.
Example:
  "texdoc pdftex" or "texdoc xetex" fail. But TDS says in principle,
  where the documentation files reside.
    TDS:doc/<program name>/
  In case of pdfTeX is shows different documentation files, examples, ...
  if I have the luck to hit the right texmf tree.
Therefore I can't see the benefit of having three texmf trees,
it just make life harder.

> to some location and "expect" it to be there.  One person's expectation
> is another person's total surprise.

The organisation of nearly 70000 files can't be based on surprise
entirely. There is TDS that at least should reduce the surprise.

> The top-level doc.html file (not updated for 2008 yet) was my attempt to
> provide an autogenerated (hence should be accurate/complete) index file
> that could be searched.  Not that I've ever gotten a single comment
> about it, so I don't think it is used.  I admit I don't use it myself :).
> So it goes.

I admit, I have never looked into it. I thought it contains some
short general intro to TeX Live.
  I see, you have also pointers to the directories. Another argument
to move doc source files out of TDS:doc.

> We've talked about various ways of improving texdoc already.  Here's
> another one: good full-text search of all files (especially PDF).  Now
> there's a project ...

Or a TeX macro index, showing where a macro is defined and documented.

Yours sincerely
  Heiko <oberdiek at uni-freiburg.de>