References: <199511171521.QAA19884@frank.zdv.uni-mainz.de>
            <199511171945.OAA01067@aleph.bu.edu>
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Date:         Sat, 18 Nov 1995 15:53:17 +0100
From: Frank Mittelbach <mittelbach@MZDMZA.ZDV.UNI-MAINZ.DE>
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Subject:      Re: distribution conditions on packages and other LaTeX software
Status: R

Matt
 > It sounds like an excellent improvement; is a summary of its syntax
 > available?  I will wait for this before releasing a revision of my
 > emacs mode for doc.sty documents.  (Still no integration with AUC-tex
 > -- it's too big a task for now -- but I'm working on compatibility
 > (not easy either).)

guess so, David could send you the dtx file, i don't want to push it
over my modem line. but i'm not sure how much it will affect your
emacs mode. It is not a change in the doc.sty interface but an
extension in the interface to .ins files. So i guess you don't gain a
lot looking at it

 > I am still vaguely troubled by the the self-contradiction at the core
 > of docstrip, namely that the model
 >
 >     latex foo.sty             -=>  foo-documentation.dvi
 >     \includepackage{foo}
 >
 > is mutually exclusive with the (more common) model:
 >
 >     latex foo.dtx             -=>  foo-documentation.dvi
 >     tex foo.ins               -=>  foo.sty bar.sty baz.sty
 >            ^
 >            |
 >         foo.dtx
 >
 >     \includepackage{foo, bar, baz}

 > The goal if I see things rightly is to have a syntax on which TeX
 > itself can be the equivalent of both weave(1) and tangle(1).  The two
 > models above are quite different solutions.  Docstrip implements
 > both. Neither is superior in every way.  You could have a much simpler
 > syntax and parser if you wrote a solution for model two that didn't
 > also have to implement model one.  It could be written in TeX or even web.

true but then doc and docstrip are historical and where original a
hack for my private TeX software. One lives and learns and nowadays I
would write such a piece of code completely differently.  Joachim's
documentation system is probably better :-) but doc.sty is something like
MS-Windows---everybody is using it to my surprise

the point is that a) there is a lot of software out there (including
our own) relying on it and who has the time to update all of this and
b) developing something new means putting resources into the game we
then don't have for other tasks. But you are right, it is something
that needs replacing at one point.

by the way, the main goal for doc/docstrip these days it to have
something which is 100% platform independent and the only software you
can rely on being available on a system where TeX runs (as an
executable) is TeX