[tex-live] datestamp in texcat

[Norbert Preining]

Hi Alexander,

On Sun, 04 Oct 2009, Alexander Cherepanov wrote:
> What do you think about preserving (some?) line breaks?

In principle a nice idea, the problem is that the current code of
reading and writing multi line description is concatenating the
lines simply. So empty longdesc lines simply disappear, and paragraphs
are eliminated. 

One *could* change the code in TeXLive::TeXCatalogue::Entry::beautify
so that newlines are preserved, or better change the parsing so that
paragraphs are preserved. 

Then one would need to check that the TeXLive::TLPOBJ::writeout routine
which uses write and a format somehow preserves this format.

Then one would need to change that the TeXLive::TLPOBJ::from_fh
that reads in the stuff somehow preserves the paragraphs or so, which
does more or less $longdesc .= $nextline does recognize paragraphs 
and enters a newline or <p> or something else.

Then one would need to change tlmgr to replace <p> or whatever has been
used to code parapgraphs/newlines to be replaced by real ones.


So bottom line, it is possible, but I currently don't have time to
work on that. My new life in Japan is taking a lot of attention.

> > Of course one could with each catalogue change increase the revision
> > number of the tlpsrc file and rebuild, 
> 
> Info from the catalogue in updated in master texlive.tlpdb without 
> touching any revision number (except for texlive.tlpdb itself). But 
> not in tlnet for some reason.

Right, because only tlnet packages are updated if the svn revison increases.

> As it is right now info from the catalogue is the property of 
> texlive.tlpdb and not of individual packages. Synchronizing its 
> updates with updates of packages seems artificial.

I don't understand what you want to say here, but so it be.

> So it seems that main assumption was that corrections to a catalogue 
> entry are rare and/or insignificant in comparison with updates of 
> corresponding package. Reasonable enough.

Or that we didn't have a clear idea but the one that catalogue changes
should not trigger package updates on the client side.

Best wishes

Norbert

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Dr. Norbert Preining                                        Associate Professor
JAIST Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology   preining at jaist.ac.jp
Vienna University of Technology                               preining at logic.at
Debian Developer (Debian TeX Task Force)                    preining at debian.org
gpg DSA: 0x09C5B094      fp: 14DF 2E6C 0307 BE6D AD76  A9C0 D2BF 4AA3 09C5 B094
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