[tex-live] Missing shortdesc (was Re: Catalogue sources)

Alexander Cherepanov cherepan at mccme.ru
Sun Sep 27 04:23:38 CEST 2009


Hi Robin!
On Sun, 27 Sep 2009 00:43:09 +0100, Robin Fairbairns <Robin.Fairbairns at cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote:

>> It turned out that catalogue entries are accessed by contents of the
>> element 'name' which is not very formal and sometimes is buggy. The
>> attribute 'id' of the element 'entry' seems more relevant. Patch:

> you're a great one for the gratuitous insult, aren't you?

Dear Robin, I'm sorry you feel yourself insulted, I didn't intend any
insult at all. Neither in this mail nor in any other mail. I know
that you (and Karl Berry, and Jim Hefferon, and Rainer Schoepf, and
others) work hard for the profit of all tex users, year by year, for
many years, and probably without any formal reward. Thanks a lot for
all your time and efforts in this area.

It seems I could be somewhat harsh sometimes. Sorry for that. It's
not really intended. Not sure how much my poor English contribute to
it but definitely something considerable. Most of what I write should
be taken literally, without looking for any hidden motives. When I say
that name elements are buggy I mean just that (look for a list of bugs
at the end of this mail) and didn't mean that it's bad or something.
And when I say that "maybe you don't care about [something]" I mean
just that, that you have many important things to do (say, write new
answers for the FAQ) and may not care about some minor details.
BTW it's always funny to read short remarks about upload daemon in
your ctan announcements. Often they just say how poor my English is:-)

And in text quoted above I just "complained" that texlive scripts had
chosen a wrong element from the catalogue, not that this element is
somehow wrong in the catalogue. I didn't mean to imply that element
'name' must be formal. I don't understand enough about the catalogue
to make such claims. In fact element 'name' seems not to be used at
all. Is it true?

And here is the list of problems with names:

  Names from different package:

    acroreloadpdf.xml:    <name>movie15</name>
    ghostscript-afpl.xml: <name>ghostscript</name>
    go-make.xml:          <name>go</name>
    svninfo.xml:          <name>Imake-TeX</name>

  (So there are two packages with each name.)
  Similar situation:

    syntax-mdw.xml:       <name>syntax</name>
    syntax2.xml:          <name>syntax</name>

  Not sure which is right (maybe both) but two distinct packages with the
  same 'name' feel wrong.

  Typos in names:

    bibbuild.xml:         <name>bibbuils</name>
    ltxindex.xml:         <name>ltindex</name>
    nolbreaks.xml:        <name>unolbreaks</name>
    t1enc.xml:            <name>t1tenc</name>
    twoside.xml:          <name></name>
    vxu.xml:              <name>vsu</name>

  And probably typo in filename:

    jpicedit.xml:         <name>jPicEdt</name>

  And usually version don't go to name:

    mattens.xml:          <name>mattens v1.1</name>

And I'm not trying to imply something here, just trying to help. If
it's of any use to you that's great. If it's not that's ok too.

Friendly,
Alexander Cherepanov




More information about the tex-live mailing list