TeX Live 2020 pretest, texdoctk.exe

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 2020-03-25 at 18:15:13 +0000, Hoffmann, Jobst wrote:

 > Ok, but in a practical training I don't like to say "start your
 > browsers", I'd prefer to say "enter texdoc scrguide" or "click on
 > that icon and enter scrguide".

The former works as expected and texdoc is actively maintained.

 > In the labs I can install texdoctk.pl correctly, but at home every
 > student is on her/his own and doesn't know, what's going on there.

Even if your students have a working texdoctk you cannot simply say
"click on that icon and enter ..." unless you have checked in advance
whether the package in question is supported by texdoctk at all.

I recommend not to point your students to texdoctk anymore because
it's unmaintained and incomplete.

The main advantage of texdoctk is that one doesn't have to know the
exact name of a particular package in advance.  Thus there had already
been discussions about a successor, at least many years ago.

Though nobody provided any code yet, everybody agreed that such a
program should use texdoc in the background instead of an
unmaintainable database.  I don't know whether the TeX-Catalogue
provides enough information to create the menu e.g., sort packages by
category.

Regards,
  Reinhard

 > And additionally: On doc.html I can't find neither the documentation
 > scrguide nor a link to koma-script, can you give me a hint?

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Reinhard Kotucha                            Phone: +49-511-3373112
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