[tex-live] distribution policy (was verbatimcopy package missing)

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Fri, 19 Sep 2008 11:29:28 +0100 schrieb Robin Fairbairns:

> Ulrike Fischer <news2 at nililand.de> wrote:
> 
>> (But I don't know to which extend sources are needed as nowadays a lot
>> of documentations includes external objects like graphics. Are the
>> source of such external objects required too? E.g. if I make a diagram
>> with a spreadsheet program and a graphic with say tiks or pstricks in
>> another document and then include this diagram and the graphic in my
>> document and perhaps also attach a pdf to my documentation, is then the
>> spreadsheet, the code of the graphic and the code of the attached pdf a
>> required part of the source? As far as can see this is not the case,
>> graphics and diagrams are taken as is. But if major parts of my document
>> would consist of imported graphics or of attached pdf's without sources
>> this would probably count as cheating.)
> 
> i reckon a document that needs a non-public text font is still usable
> (with care) by those who don't have that font.  however, a document that
> needs an image is unlikely to be satisfactory without it.

That wasn't what I meant. Certainly the graphic (the png or pdf or eps
or mps-file) itself should be in the sources of the documentation. But
what is with the source of the graphic? 


>> For similar reasons as the author of csquotes I can't put sources that
>> compile on CTAN, my documentations use unpublished packages, personal
>> settings and lokal fonts. And unlike the author of csquotes I don't want
>> to put a source that don't compile on CTAN, partly because the sources
>> contain a lot of personal comments and I would have to postprocess it,
>> partly because I do find it a bit silly to do it "only for legal
>> reasons".  
> 
> i'm a little uneasy about this.  as i said, i'm not worried about the
> fonts issue (unless you're using, say, an exotic symbol font, without
> which the document text is actually meaningless). what are these local
> settings (?packages) that can't be included in the preamble of a
> document?

They could all be included in the theory in the preamble, no problem
there. But this would mean (like cleaning the sources) that I would have
to postprocess the documentation and it would take me some time to
figure out how to do it in a reliable way. I simply don't write my
tex-files and private packages in a way that is suitable for the public.
They always contain comments, remainders and bits of code. I will
perhaps sometime in the future try to set up something that gives a
sensible cleaned source, but currently I have other things on my mind.


>> Btw: In the case of minitoc it is miktex which doesn't package the doc
>> since users complained about the size (the pdf is 27 MB large and
>> together with the sources the package grow up to 65MB).
> 
> of course texlive gets around this by having separate distributions:
> 64mbyte .tar.lzma doc (which includes all the documentation related images, of
> course), 390kb of source, and 54kb of run files.

Yes, on the miktex list somebody also suggested to split the package. In
my opinion it would be even senseful to split the documentation in "doc"
and "source of doc".

(And even better it would be if all the content not related directly to
minitoc would go in an other document).
 
> minitoc's documentation is outright mad. 

megadoc from minitoc ;-).

-- 
Ulrike Fischer