References: <199707031135.MAA13033@knott.elsevier.co.uk>
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            <199707031710.TAA02026@frank.zdv.uni-mainz.de>
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Date:         Fri, 4 Jul 1997 09:03:43 +0100
From: Sebastian Rahtz <s.rahtz@ELSEVIER.CO.UK>
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Subject:      Re: Availability of Class files (was: LaTeX3 goals)
Status: R

 > i think this goes a bit out of hand and in different directions:
 > originally the suggestion was to collect class files that are around,
 > now we are talking about classifying the whole LaTeX universe.

its sometimes not easy to distinguish pure class files from other
paraphernalia?

 > collecting class files means not only looking at CTAN but actively
 > asking publishers (somehow) to give their class files out if they have
 > any. many publishers do have class files that they send to people on
 > request.
others, like us, actively do not distribute their real working class
files...

 >
 >     * 5 does definitely not work with current LaTeX (after checking)

in that case it would not be kept on CTAN! i dont see the point

 >     * by default everything goes to 4 (which mean uncheck, might not
 >       work with current LaTeX)
you are approaching this from a 3rd direction, which is whether things
*work*.

 >       an active process, eg one way as i see this could happen is a
 >       couple of volunteers with a coordinator is taking the current
 >       ctan dirs in chunks and check the packages/class styles, write
 >       one para for each that seems to work and sends this finding to
 >       the coordinator.
thats a hell of a lot of work, and not particularly robust or even
useful. what I want to know is will package X work with my package Y,
and the volunteer tester is not going to find that out for me.

my test for TeX Live is whether it runs its own documentation and test
files. i threw out half a dozen packages on this criterion - if they
don't work internally i am not interested in them at all. this also
provides the test `does it run against current release, as opposed to
release when they wrote it'

 >     * things go into 2 by acclamation but i would like to see 2 being
 >       separated out into
 >         2-general       stuff that is usable in various fields
 >                         and applications, or is expected to be used
 >                         a lot.
 >         2-applications
 >
 >       with the suggestion that 2-general should be always included
 >       into a distribution but 2-applications as well if there is a bit
 >       of space left.
thats a fair distinction

sebastian