[tex-live] Package documentation

[Robin Fairbairns]

Julian Gilbey <jdg at polya.uklinux.net> wrote:

> I've been noticing that the CTAN team is wisely becoming reluctant to
> install typeset versions of the dtx files, since they have a habit of
> becoming outdated.

um, what?  we tend to go out of our way to get documentation that can be
read on-line.  true, we have switched to pdf form (since dvi makes
assumptions that aren't necessarily true of all machines), but i've
created a lot of pdf files for packages whose author hadn't done the
job.

it's not actually difficult to keep these things up-to-date, of course,
since we are in control when updates arrive.

> This makes a lot of sense.  However, I am now
> hitting a new snag: when I want documentation on some packages when
> using the Debian 2007 (testing) texlive packages, it seems that I have
> to go to CTAN to download the documentation or dtx files.  I don't
> know whether this is because I simply haven't found the documentation
> on my system or whether it's not been built.  One example that I've
> recently had was the changebar package.
> 
> I wonder whether it's feasible to automatically build the
> documentation into the appropriate texlive packages?

there _is_ a changebar.pdf in texlive.  i don't actually know if the
texlive team build them specially, but since there's one on ctan, they
don't actually need to.

i suspect you're observing the typical "documentation takes up space"
whinge of the packager: debian probably has a separate documentation
.deb file, which doesn't get installed by default.  (iirc, there's
separate rpms for fedora texlive, for example.)

robin