[tex-live] MetaPost mfplain in Debian distro

[Steve White]

Hey, Karl,

Thanks for your explanation, it got me a bit farther.

However, there is a problem, my time was wasted, as was other people's.
Some effort on the part of the TeX folks could help a lot.

(In the rest, I am addressing whoever is in charge of TeX-Live, as
well as Karl.)

On Sun, Sep 21, 2008 at 12:31 AM, Karl Berry <karl at freefriends.org> wrote:
> Hi Steve,
>
>    As Matijs points out, there are no ".mem" files whatever in the
>    distro, so all the -mem and "&" methods for loading them fail.
>    (Maybe this is a packaging problem?)
>
> I couldn't say.  This is the vanilla TeX Live list, Debian-specific
> issues need to be reported to Debian.
>
As I said, a report has been filed with Debian.  Nothing happened.  I
don't think they knew what to do with it.  What would they do?  Spend
hours as Matijs and I have fiddling with the thing?
Or write to this list, as I have?  Are you suggesting that we have
both written to the wrong people?

I don't know how the software was intended to work.  As installed on
Debian systems, it doesn't seem to work the way the documentation
describes it.

This could be viewed a communication problem.

>    What can I do to get the functionality of mfplain?
>
> mfplain is meant to be dumped as a mem, not read as a straight file.
> Therefore:
>
> $ mpost -ini mfplain dump
>
> And then
>
> $ mpost \&./mfplain yourfile.mf
>
OK thanks! that work-around got me going.

If this had been plainly stated in the mpost man page and/or the PDF
help file, my immediate problem would not have arisen.

> I don't recall why mfplain isn't directly in TL any more, or if it ever
> was.  Maybe we thought no one used it?  Yours is the first report I've
> ever seen about it :).  Seems like it should be easy enough to (re)add,
> in any case.
>
Maybe many people tried to use it, saw the hours ticking by, and gave
up. A tiny fraction of them wrote but reports.   Outlandish idea?

Karl, my report was maybe the first you've seen, but let me point out
again, reports have been filed elsewhere (I mentioned Matijs van
Zuijlen's bug report
   http://lists.debian.org/debian-tex-maint/2007/12/msg00174.html )

I don't know how the software is meant to be installed, and I don't
know whose fault it is, I just know that the first time I tried it, it
did not work as advertized.

My understanding is that this list is the bug reporting system for the
project.  You have two bug reports.  Please work together with the
Debian folks to improve the distribution of your software.

Thanks!