[XeTeX] doc/samples available via i-Installer

[Bruno Voisin]

Le 14 mars 05, à 10:01, Jonathan Kew a écrit :

> But it doesn't help those (many, I think) who install the software via 
> i-Installer. Providing an i-Package for docs/samples is a way to draw 
> the existence of these materials to their attention, but the question 
> remains: what should their default installation location be?

Le 14 mars 05, à 10:27, Jonathan Kew a écrit :

> What I'd like to do, I think, would be to make the i-Package for 
> documentation and samples *always* prompt the user to choose a 
> destination folder. Currently, there's a default location set by the 
> package, and my guess is that few i-Installer users even realize that 
> it's possible to click a button and change it. I'd like the i-Package 
> to be able to specify that clicking the "Install" button always brings 
> up the "change install location" sheet before proceeding.
>
> If I can find time, I'll try to find out whether i-Installer can be 
> made to do this--or if Gerben is listening, perhaps he can comment and 
> save me the trouble!
>
> Or is it a lousy idea in the first place?

It's probably a bit unfair for me to speak again about this topic, 
given I've already expressed an opinion earlier. Anyway...

I'm not sure it's a good idea to introduce an additional i-Package (or 
Download) for the XeTeX documentation and samples. The sizes involved 
are not so big; thus, why not include the documentation and samples 
inside the main XeTeX i-package or .pkg (or .dmg) file?

Then a possible scenario would be the following:

- Inside the ReadMe files displayed during either install (ie, via 
i-Installer or Apple Installer) of this "enhanced" XeTeX, mention 
explicitly the (default) location where the documentation and samples 
are put.

- Ideally, save the appropriate ReadMe file on disk. (Where: I don't 
know.) I'm the kind of person who reads no more than the first 10 lines 
or so of any text displayed during an installation procedure (I've 
often regretted afterwards to have not read completely the ReadMe files 
for the TeX i-Package during installation, it would have avoided asking 
senseless questions to the OS X TeX list); in such cases it's nice to 
have the ReadMe file saved somewhere, for further reference and study.

- Prepare man pages for XeTeX, mentioning the (default) location for 
the documentation and samples. It's true people not familiar with Unix 
won't think of "xetex -help" or "xdv2pdf -h" from the command line, and 
similarly for "man xetex" or "man xdv2pdf". On the other hand, GUIs for 
man pages are getting increasingly common, such as ManOpen 
<http://www.clindberg.org/projects/ManOpen.html> (my favorite), VuMan 
<http://www.wordtech-software.com/vuman.html> (from Kevin Walzer, an 
occasional poster to the OS X TeX list), and probably others; Xcode has 
also a menu item "Help > Open man page..." for pretty-displaying man 
pages.

As to the default doc and samples location, I still would favour 
someplace inside /Library/Documentation/. Looking more thoroughly 
inside this directory, there appears to be at least three standard 
subdirectories:

/Library/Documentation/Commands
/Library/Documentation/Help
/Library/Documentation/Libraries

The second one is a place for putting help files for the OS X Help 
Viewer, but the other two seem to be places for putting documentation 
(apparently in HTML form) for various Unix utilities (grep, gzip, etc.) 
and libraries (libiconv) without, I think, Apple referring to it 
elsewhere.

But then there's another problem: samples, such as those for XeTeX, 
which are supposed to be processed, possibly modified and/or used as 
templates, should probably not reside inside the "local" (in OS X 
jargon) file system, ie inside /Library, and instead they should reside 
inside each user's file system, ie inside ~/Library. This is quite 
natural for a GUI application such as TeXShop, which stores its 
templates etc. inside the application bundle and upon first launch by a 
user installs a copy in a directory ~/Library/TeXShop. Other GUI 
applications, such as Keynote 1, put their templates inside 
/Library/Application Support (for Keynote 2 it's inside the application 
bundle, apparently), and offer menu items IIRC for using these 
templates without having to modify the original template files. Then, 
what to do for XeTeX which isn't GUI?

Just some more random thoughts.

Bruno Voisin