X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil] ["2273" "Fri" "13" "November" "1998" "10:02:45" "GMT" "David Carlisle" "davidc@NAG.CO.UK" nil "45" "Re: What is \"base\" LaTeX" "^Date:" nil nil "11" nil "What is \"base\" LaTeX" nil nil nil] nil) Received: from listserv.gmd.de (listserv.gmd.de [192.88.97.1]) by mail.Uni-Mainz.DE (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id LAA01277; Fri, 13 Nov 1998 11:03:35 +0100 (MET) Received: from lsv1.listserv.gmd.de (192.88.97.2) by listserv.gmd.de (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <1.B4F646FE@listserv.gmd.de>; Fri, 13 Nov 1998 11:03:28 +0100 Received: from RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE by RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE (LISTSERV-TCP/IP release 1.8b) with spool id 408485 for LATEX-L@RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE; Fri, 13 Nov 1998 11:03:19 +0100 Received: from nag.co.uk (openmath.nag.co.uk [192.156.217.16]) by relay.urz.uni-heidelberg.de (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id LAA07016 for ; Fri, 13 Nov 1998 11:03:16 +0100 (MET) Received: (from davidc@localhost) by nag.co.uk (AIX4.2/UCB 8.7/8.7) id KAA27264; Fri, 13 Nov 1998 10:02:45 GMT References: Message-ID: <199811131002.KAA27264@nag.co.uk> Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project In-Reply-To: (message from Robin Fairbairns on Fri, 13 Nov 1998 09:07:47 +0000) Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 10:02:45 GMT From: David Carlisle Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L Subject: Re: What is "base" LaTeX Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 2881 > the fact that things are in contrib/supported is no real indication at > all -- people ask for their stuff to go there, and then disappear (for > example, the author of booktabs, an excellent package, is uncontactable), The original idea of the supported area (and described in a document of Joachim's which I am not sure was ever really public) was that there would be some kind of `robot' sitting at ctan that a) checked that the package would unpack and produce own documentation 2) would mail the author every six months with a `are you there' message If the author didn't reply within a certain timescale the package would automatically be ejected from `supported' back to `other'. There was some resistance amongst package authors to the suggestion of getting automatic mail. Also there are some problems with the idea of automatic demotion. If a distribution just has the `supported' stuff this means that from year to year you never know which packages are going to get thrown out, and so which of your documents will break. This latter fear tends to mean that distributions tend to just get larger without ever throwing out stuff. This means that they will inevitably end up with packages written by someone who used tex for a while while writing up a thesis several years before and is now uncontactable (at least via the student email address in the file). You either just freeze the package and leave it in unchanged, for ever. or you throw it out and break any documents that have used it. Or perhaps you take a `pragmatic' approach to any copyright and distribution notice on the file, and let some new user who wants to develop or fix the package take up control. None of these options is necessarily desirable or legal. Phillip said > To sum up, get rid of contrib/supported. If it's supported, it should > go into the core. No, there must always be a distinction between the core latex distribution as coming from the latex project, and contributed stuff. Even if contrib is split between a `must have' minimal base latex distribution and an `optional extra' contributed package section. If stuff is in the core then people can mail latex-bugs@mainz and moan if it doesn't work, and then I (or Frank or Chris) is supposed to fix it. David