Metadata for the TeX Live Guides

[Takuto ASAKURA]

Hi All,

@Karl

> the descriptions seem entirely redundant to me

Yes, I know it is almost redundant for human beings, but
not for computers. Extracting the "details" and "languages"
from filenames by a program *perfectly* will be tough work.
I thought it is rather easier to add such information by
human hands, especially for TeX Live-only documents, because
they are not so many.

> Anyway, I know texdoc prefers results with such "metadata", but I
> think/hope any resulting issues could/should be resolved in the
> software.


Your guess is right. I was thinking about the result lists of Texdoc.
I also thought about making an additional database to provide
such data just for Texdoc. However, maybe sharing such information
for a more general-purpose database will be beneficial, and that's
why I shared my idea.

I supposed it will improve the tlpdb a bit with small work if it
could be implemented easily. If the implementation is not so easy
than I thought, that's not the case.

@Reinhard

> Furthermore, the XML sources of the Catalogue are not available to the
> public which prevents users from sending patches to CTAN.


I didn't know this. Thanks for the interesting tip.

Best,
Takuto

> On 2019/12/14, at 8:06, Karl Berry <karl at freefriends.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi Takuto,
> 
>    I noticed that there are no doc metadata in the tlpdb for
> 
> The details="" and other such strings come from the TeX Catalogue. The
> TL manual is not on CTAN, hence not in the Catalogue, hence no extra
> strings.
> 
> And, to be honest, the descriptions seem entirely redundant to me (no
> more information than is already in the filename), so I'm not enthused
> about setting up a new mechanism to add them. Calling them "metadata"
> seems rather too grandiose.
> 
> Anyway, I know texdoc prefers results with such "metadata", but I
> think/hope any resulting issues could/should be resolved in the
> software. --best, karl.