[tex-live] TL vs CTAN

[Philipp Stephani]

Am 21.11.2009 um 15:08 schrieb Victor Ivrii:

> On Sat, Nov 21, 2009 at 5:37 AM, Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard <mpg at elzevir.fr> wrote:
>> Victor Ivrii a écrit :
>>> However it is a good question what file should be open by texdoc:
>>> manual.pdf is IMHO the most useful for end user but hyperref.pdf
>>> contains links to many other pdf files of hyperref bundle (including
>>> manual.pdf) and manual.pdf doesn't
>>> 
>> For some time I resisted and didn't want to show manual.pdf first,
>> though it was asked many time. I still don't have a strong opinion here,
>> but I'd like to mention that texdoc has several modes, like --list which
>> make it list all results in a menu. Currently it is not of much use
>> here, since the alias "kills" other results, but it will be fixed in the
>> next version (to be uploaded in a few days):
>> 
>> mpg at roth:~% texdoc --list hyperref
>>  1 /usr/local/texlive/2009/texmf-dist/doc/latex/hyperref/manual.pdf
>>  2 /usr/local/texlive/2009/texmf-dist/doc/latex/hyperref/hyperref.pdf
>>  3 /usr/local/texlive/2009/texmf-dist/doc/latex/hyperref/manual.html
>>  4 /usr/local/texlive/2009/texmf-dist/doc/latex/hyperref/ChangeLog.pdf
>>  5 /usr/local/texlive/2009/texmf-dist/doc/latex/hyperref/README.pdf
>>  6 /usr/local/texlive/2009/texmf-dist/doc/latex/hyperref/backref.pdf
>>  7 /usr/local/texlive/2009/texmf-dist/doc/latex/hyperref/nameref.pdf
>>  8 /usr/local/texlive/2009/texmf-dist/doc/latex/hyperref/options.pdf
>>  9 /usr/local/texlive/2009/texmf-dist/doc/latex/hyperref/paper.pdf
>> 10 /usr/local/texlive/2009/texmf-dist/doc/latex/hyperref/slides.pdf
>> 11 /usr/local/texlive/2009/texmf-dist/doc/latex/hyperref/manual2.html
>> 12 /usr/local/texlive/2009/texmf-dist/doc/latex/hyperref/manual3.html
>> Please enter the number of the file to view, anything else to skip:
>> 
> 
> Nice
> 
>> There ise also a --mixed mode that opens the result in a viewer if there
>> is only one result, or displays a menu if there are many results.
>> 
> 
> "is" or "coming?" currently in MacTeX it opens manual.pdf

De facto there "is" only one result because texdoc.cnf contains an explicit alias to hyperref/manual. This is a bit unfortunate, but the general consensus seems to be that "texdoc packagename" should open the document that is most usable for average users. In the case of hyperref, the situation is exceptionally bad because the file manual.pdf is incomplete, and users must read the readme and changelog files as well.