[tex-live] Bug#477160: /usr/bin/xdvizilla: should be installed in /usr/lib/.../

[Stefan Ulrich]

Karl Berry <karl at freefriends.org> writes:

>     ... and I am wondering whether xdvizilla is useful at all for anything
> Seems like it could be removed to me, but this is a question for the
> xdvi maintainers.  Stefan, I see you're on this list ... ?

I just made a few tests with opening files from
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/translations/es/dvi/
with Firefox 2.0.0.14; when opening a .dvi.gz file, the server sends
an 'application/x-dvi' MIME type and Fierfox suggests to open it with
the default application 'xdvi', but it doesn't unpack the .dvi.gz
before passing it to xdvi, so the original problem that xdvizilla
tried to address still seems to be present.

On the other hand, some of the xdvi wrapper scripts out there can
already deal with gzipped DVI files.

Also if the webserver doesn't send an 'application/x-dvi' MIME type
for .dvi.gz files (which it doesn't do on other sites I tested, and it
could even be argued that this is the correct behaviour since .dvi.gz
is not DVI after all), Firefox just sees an 'application/x-gzip' file
and won't try xdvizilla anyway (same for .tar or .tgz files).

And the default to delete the source file unless '-no-rm' is specified
can be quite nasty for unsuspecting users as seen in the bug report
that originated this.

So maybe we can just remove it from the binary distribution, but
keep the sources in the CVS so that people who use the script
can still download it?

Best regards,
Stefan