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

[Robin Fairbairns]

Alexander Cherepanov <cherepan at mccme.ru> wrote:

> > 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.

it provides a trace of who did what.  (like "who on earth wrote this
rubbish description")

> > 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.

aha!  must have failed to check in the change (i certainly did it last
night).  i've redone it now, and checked in (so when i get home tonight
i'll get a version clash when i update my repo copy).

Alexander Cherepanov <cherepan at mccme.ru> wrote:

> > 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 .)

sure.  but there's no way it's going to be detected anywhere that it
doesn't affect the syntax.  (i don't try to check the linguistic
structures of data fields in my perl script...)

> 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.

i've never used a normaliser, but this may be worth looking at.
however, this catalogue is a source of data for generating html pages,
not a source of stuff to read; normalising things may not be useful.

> >> Are you interested in other irregularities?
> 
> > if you spot significant things, like missing author attributions, or
> > failure to record dates, yes.
> 
> Ok, I see.

the real point is, if an xml file generates correct output, and is
readable by someone using a general text editor to make changes, then
it's ok.

for example, i occasionally spot some "irregular" order while editing:
when that happens i usually reorder things.  but i don't care enough
about the issue to go seeking out such irregularities (and my checking
script doesn't even have the wherewithal to look).

robin