[tex-live] datestamp in texcat (was: Re: cam.ctan.org upload: answers)

[Alexander Cherepanov]

Hi Robin!
On Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:23:27 +0100, Robin Fairbairns <Robin.Fairbairns at cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote:

>> BTW I have checked datestamps in texcat for regularity. There are two
>> anomalies:
>> 
>>   <entry datestamp='$Date: 2009-09-13 08:55:53 +0100 (Sun, 13 Sep 2009) $ ' modifier='$Author: robin$' id='parrun'>
>>   <entry datestamp='$Date: 2007-08-15 19:43:35 +0100 (Wed, 15 Aug 2007)$' modifier='$Author: robin $' id='shipunov'>
>> 
>> parrun has an extra space after $ and shipunov lacks a space before $. 
>> And we see that parrun lacks a space before $ in the modifier field. 

> while they upset an imagined plan, they're totally insignificant in an
> informational element; they remain valid xml, after all.

I wouldn't even know they exist if they don't break scripts for 
generating texlive database (texlive.tlpdb). You probably remember the 
problem with parrun. And I wrote about shipunov in 
http://tug.org/pipermail/tex-live/2009-September/022529.html .

Right now catalogue-date properties are broken^Wirregular for both 
parrun and shipunov in texlive.tlpdb. Don't know how significant it is 
though.

Maybe just texlive scripts should be fixed (I'm Cc'ing 
tex-live at tug.org). Or maybe it's just me.

>> There are also irregularities in modifier field in other entries:

> some of which are significant in the sense that they've caused the
> commit procedure not to update information.  deleting the
> non-significant ones, we see that in both of:

>>   <entry datestamp='$Date: 2007-09-27 23:47:14 +0100 (Thu, 27 Sep 2007) $' modifier='$Authors$' id='hepunits'>
>>   <entry datestamp='$Date: 2006-12-22 19:40:11 +0000 (Fri, 22 Dec 2006) $' modifier='$Author' id='quotchap'>

> the omitted ":" has meant that checkin hasn't recorded the "author"
> involved (in our case, the last editor of the xml).

modifier attribute is probably never used outside texcat so it's 
entirely up to you to decide on significance of this. I wrote about it 
just in case.

> i (think) i've tidied up the problems you detected, even the ones
> (spurious line breaks) that don't bother anyone (white space inside xml
> elements tends to be ignored).

Thanks. Spurious line breaks are gone and irregular spacing before $ is 
up in the air. But hepunits is still with modifier='$Authors$' in the 
public repository.

> i can check for the missing colons,
> since they'll show up in my xml checker; i can't check for spurious line
> breaks or for the odd too many or few spaces, since i check a document
> tree, not the individual characters in the file.

Yes but the fact of missing space between non-spaces is detectable 
even in XML. (At least according to my cursory reading of
http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-xml-20081126/#AVNormalize .)

Another idea: just pipe entries through some xml normalizer before 
committing them. This will take care of spurious line breaks, 
different attributes order (66 entries have unusual order of 
attributes in entry element; yes, I know, it doesn't bother anyone) 
etc.

>> Are you interested in other irregularities?

> if you spot significant things, like missing author attributions, or
> failure to record dates, yes.

Ok, I see.

> i'll work on the checker over the
> weekend, and the overnight check may pick up extra stuff.

Alexander Cherepanov