On Sat, 16 Mar 2002, C.M. Connelly [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Many packages contain preprints or reprints of academic papers as
part of their documentation. In many cases, there is no
``source'' available for these documents -- they are distributed
as PostScript or PDF files.
...
My feeling is that as ``historical documents'' -- frozen documents
describing some early state or underlayment of the software, and
not day-to-day documentation -- we shouldn't worry that much about
not having the source for these documents. Others may disagree,
believing that we need to have source for everything that we
distribute.
I originally raised this issue wrt the file
/usr/share/doc/texmf/metapost/base/mpman.ps.gz in the tetex-doc package.
This is a preprint distributed by Bell Labs, and so is an academic
preprint, but the abstract explains
This document serves as an introductory user's manual.
AFAICT, this is the principal reference manual for MetaPost. If one
wanted to modify the MetaPost language in some way, you would probably
also want to modify this manual.
I think it is definitely in Debian's interest to have the source for this
academic paper.
I'm about to go ask John Hobby if he's willing to release the source,
but in general I think Debian should insist on source, even for academic
papers.
Note that one of the largest archives of academic papers on the web,
http://arxiv.org, insists on TeX source. From
http://arxiv.org/help/faq/whytex.html:
Why submit the TeX source?
1. TeX has many advantages that make it ideal as a format for the archives:
It is plain ASCII, it is compact, it is freely available for all
platforms, it produces extremely high-quality output, and it retains
contextual information.
(It is thus more likely to be a good source from which to generate newer
formats, e.g. MathML [namely HTML, or more specifically XML, which handles
mathematics correctly -- note that the MathML people plan a LaTeX to MathML
translator, but dvi/ps/pdf lack the necessary document structuring concepts].
Possession of the source thus provides many additional options for future
document migrations (none of us really expect dvi, ps, pdf, etc., to be the
final word).
These are good reasons for wanting source in general, independent of any need
for modification.
Best,
Dylan Thurston
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