Re: whereabouts of chktex

[Jean-Pierre Chretien]

To: Kevin Pfeiffer [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: lyx-users@lists.lyx.org
Subject: Re: whereabouts of chktex
From: Jean-Marc Lasgouttes [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu, 26 May 2005 17:01:27 +0200

 Kevin == Kevin Pfeiffer [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Kevin But it is listed (though inactive) in the menu. 

I can make it disappear when unavailable if you prefer :)

 There is a similar utility named 'lacheck'. Is it bundled on more
 distributions? If it is we could think about modifying our code to
 understand this.

TexLive has got it:
-which lacheck
/usr/local/TeX/bin/sparc-sun-solaris2.8/lacheck


Kevin Yeah, I saw that in the SuSE distro I believe.

I would be interested to know which distribs have that. It could be a
good idea to use it if it is more mainstream than chktex, especially
since chktex can emulate it.

If lacheck comes with all current (La)TeX distros (MikTeX, teTeX, TeXLive,...)
what about Check Tex calling lacheck if chktex is not available ?

-- 
Jean-Pierre

 

Re: whereabouts of chktex

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

 Jean-Pierre == Jean-Pierre Chretien [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Jean-Pierre If lacheck comes with all current (La)TeX distros
Jean-Pierre (MikTeX, teTeX, TeXLive,...) what about Check Tex calling
Jean-Pierre lacheck if chktex is not available ?

Sure, but we have to modify the error parsing code to understand the
lacheck syntax.

JMarc

Re: whereabouts of chktex

[Jean-Pierre Chretien]

To: Kevin Pfeiffer [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: lyx-users@lists.lyx.org
Subject: Re: whereabouts of chktex
From: Jean-Marc Lasgouttes [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu, 26 May 2005 17:01:27 +0200

 Kevin == Kevin Pfeiffer [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Kevin But it is listed (though inactive) in the menu. 

I can make it disappear when unavailable if you prefer :)

 There is a similar utility named 'lacheck'. Is it bundled on more
 distributions? If it is we could think about modifying our code to
 understand this.

TexLive has got it:
-which lacheck
/usr/local/TeX/bin/sparc-sun-solaris2.8/lacheck


Kevin Yeah, I saw that in the SuSE distro I believe.

I would be interested to know which distribs have that. It could be a
good idea to use it if it is more mainstream than chktex, especially
since chktex can emulate it.

If lacheck comes with all current (La)TeX distros (MikTeX, teTeX, TeXLive,...)
what about Check Tex calling lacheck if chktex is not available ?

-- 
Jean-Pierre

 

Re: whereabouts of chktex

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

 Jean-Pierre == Jean-Pierre Chretien [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Jean-Pierre If lacheck comes with all current (La)TeX distros
Jean-Pierre (MikTeX, teTeX, TeXLive,...) what about Check Tex calling
Jean-Pierre lacheck if chktex is not available ?

Sure, but we have to modify the error parsing code to understand the
lacheck syntax.

JMarc

Re: whereabouts of chktex

[Jean-Pierre Chretien]

>>To: Kevin Pfeiffer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>Cc: lyx-users@lists.lyx.org
>>Subject: Re: whereabouts of chktex
>>From: Jean-Marc Lasgouttes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>Date: Thu, 26 May 2005 17:01:27 +0200
>>
>>>>>>> "Kevin" == Kevin Pfeiffer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>>
>>Kevin> But it is listed (though inactive) in the menu. 
>>
>>I can make it disappear when unavailable if you prefer :)
>>
>>>> There is a similar utility named 'lacheck'. Is it bundled on more
>>>> distributions? If it is we could think about modifying our code to
>>>> understand this.

TexLive has got it:
->which lacheck
/usr/local/TeX/bin/sparc-sun-solaris2.8/lacheck

>>
>>Kevin> Yeah, I saw that in the SuSE distro I believe.
>>
>>I would be interested to know which distribs have that. It could be a
>>good idea to use it if it is more mainstream than chktex, especially
>>since chktex can emulate it.

If lacheck comes with all current (La)TeX distros (MikTeX, teTeX, TeXLive,...)
what about Check Tex calling lacheck if chktex is not available ?

-- 
Jean-Pierre

 

Re: whereabouts of chktex

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

> "Jean-Pierre" == Jean-Pierre Chretien <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

Jean-Pierre> If lacheck comes with all current (La)TeX distros
Jean-Pierre> (MikTeX, teTeX, TeXLive,...) what about Check Tex calling
Jean-Pierre> lacheck if chktex is not available ?

Sure, but we have to modify the error parsing code to understand the
lacheck syntax.

JMarc

Re: whereabouts of chktex [Was Re: feature suggestion]

[Angus Leeming]

Kevin Pfeiffer wrote:

 [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 Here's an alternative take on this problem. Why not use 'chktex' or a
 similar approach. For those who don't know 'chktex', it's a parser that
 detects common errors and mistakes, and it works with lyx if you have
 it installed. (Under Edit-CheckTeX I think).
 
 Not installed on my system (SuSE 9,3); I also couldn't find it in the
 main distribution. Is it perhaps contained in a packge that goes by
 another name?

Try clicking on the very first entry returned by googling on chktex...
http://baruch.ev-en.org/proj/chktex/

-- 
Angus

Re: whereabouts of chktex [Was Re: feature suggestion]

[Matej Cepl]

Kevin Pfeiffer wrote:
  Not installed on my system (SuSE 9,3)

Well, then you should complain to the maintainers of your distribution --
Debian has it :-).

 Perhaps this should be included with LyX (and since there is already a
 menu hook to it) -- or is it already (though not in my distro)?

No, it shouldn't be certainly included in LyX. I do not think it is a good
idea to fix broken distribution by bundling it all together with LyX (have
you heard about do one thing, and do it perfectly principle?). Will you
expect LyX maintainers to maintain it, so they have something to do in
their plenty of spare time?

Moreover, chktex is so simple program that anybody could make .rpm/.deb out
of it. I did it myself (many years ago, when I was still with RedHat) as my
first .rpm package and even though I knew next to nothing about packaging I
did it in an hour or so.

Best,

Matej

-- 
Matej Cepl, http://www.ceplovi.cz/matej
GPG Finger: 89EF 4BC6 288A BF43 1BAB  25C3 E09F EF25 D964 84AC
138 Highland Ave. #10, Somerville, Ma 02143, (617) 623-1488
 
Give your heartache to him. (1Pt 5,7; Mt 11:28-30)

Re: whereabouts of chktex [Was Re: feature suggestion]

[Matej Cepl]

Kevin Pfeiffer wrote:
 Try clicking on the very first entry returned by googling on
 chktex... http://baruch.ev-en.org/proj/chktex/
 
 That would be much too easy. :-) I guess I assumed that it should be
 included in the usual packages  or even in the LyX distribution.

BTW, just one more thing -- is http://rpmfind.net still around?

Matej

-- 
Matej Cepl, http://www.ceplovi.cz/matej
GPG Finger: 89EF 4BC6 288A BF43 1BAB  25C3 E09F EF25 D964 84AC
138 Highland Ave. #10, Somerville, Ma 02143, (617) 623-1488
 
See, when the GOVERNMENT spends money, it creates jobs; whereas
when the money is left in the hands of TAXPAYERS, God only knows
what they do with it. Bake it into pies, probably. Anything to
avoid creating jobs.
-- Dave Barry

Re: whereabouts of chktex [Was Re: feature suggestion]

[Angus Leeming]

Matej Cepl wrote:

Not installed on my system (SuSE 9,3)



Well, then you should complain to the maintainers of your distribution --
Debian has it :-).


Incidentally, Matej, which Debian flavour do you use? I have a machine 
running Debian unstable at work and keeping it up to date is, not 
surprisingly, a continual battle. Indeed, it would be impractical to use at 
home. However, Debian stable is, well a little to stable :)


I quite like the Fedora twice yearly update cycle, but also like Debian's 
you don't need to reinstall the entire machine, just update the packages 
as and when they are improved.


How to square this circle?

Angus

Re: whereabouts of chktex

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

 Matej == Matej Cepl [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Matej No, it shouldn't be certainly included in LyX. I do not think
Matej it is a good idea to fix broken distribution by bundling it all
Matej together with LyX (have you heard about do one thing, and do
Matej it perfectly principle?). Will you expect LyX maintainers to
Matej maintain it, so they have something to do in their plenty of
Matej spare time?

Indeed.

Matej Moreover, chktex is so simple program that anybody could make
Matej .rpm/.deb out of it. I did it myself (many years ago, when I
Matej was still with RedHat) as my first .rpm package and even though
Matej I knew next to nothing about packaging I did it in an hour or
Matej so.

And I will be glad to host it on ftp.lyx.org.

There is a similar utility named 'lacheck'. Is it bundled on more
distributions? If it is we could think about modifying our code to
understand this.

JMarc

Re: whereabouts of chktex [Was Re: feature suggestion]

[Matej Cepl]

Angus Leeming wrote:
 Incidentally, Matej, which Debian flavour do you use?

testing (soon to be stable, but I will probably keep with testing).

 I have a machine 
 running Debian unstable at work and keeping it up to date is, not
 surprisingly, a continual battle.

Unstable is really, well, unstable. With testing I am able to somehow work
over dial-up (that somehow is that aptitude update downloads 3MB+ of
data, and that sucks) with occasional taking notebook to some friendly
Internet cafe or university, when I want to actually upgrade (that could be
100MB+ of packages, especially when KDE is upgraded, which was pretty often
this year). If you have broadband at home, then I do not see any problem
with Debian/testing whatsoever. It is just six months of experience but I
have never experienced any hiccup with testing (and I know there were some
with unstable, even though it was kept slightly back, because sarge was
being frozen last year). It may get slightly wilder ride when unstable will
be open wide again and we could get some broken packages into testing --
but then certainly sid will be more broken then it is now as well, so eck
will be still much better choice IMHO.

 Indeed, it would be impractical to use 
 at home. However, Debian stable is, well a little to stable :)

I was able to work with Debian stable until the spring of this year with a
lot of backports http://www.backports.org and KDE backports, but when I
got a new computer, I gave up on that and have been using sarge since then,
and it serves me pretty well.

 I quite like the Fedora twice yearly update cycle, but also like Debian's
 you don't need to reinstall the entire machine, just update the packages
 as and when they are improved.

I do not know anything about Fedora (I gave up on RedHat when it was IIRC
7.0), but ability of Debian people to held whole distribution together so
well as they do never stops to amaze me (and the fact, that I do not have
to hunt packages all over the Internet anymore). And yes I am willing to
pay price in getting slower updates than rest of the world -- when it is
just slightly slower, not woody.

Best,

Matej

-- 
Matej Cepl, http://www.ceplovi.cz/matej
GPG Finger: 89EF 4BC6 288A BF43 1BAB  25C3 E09F EF25 D964 84AC
138 Highland Ave. #10, Somerville, Ma 02143, (617) 623-1488
 
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as
the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to
steal bread.
-- Anatole France

Re: whereabouts of chktex [Was Re: feature suggestion]

[Kevin Pfeiffer]

Matej Cepl writes:
 No, it shouldn't be certainly included in LyX. I do not think it is a
 good idea to fix broken distribution by bundling it all together with
 LyX (have you heard about do one thing, and do it perfectly
 principle?). Will you expect LyX maintainers to maintain it, so they
 have something to do in their plenty of spare time?

:-) (Yeah, I almost added the words in a perfect world to my original 
post)

But it is listed (though inactive) in the menu. So I should modify my 
previous post to say in a perfect world with a dozen full-time LyX 
programmers I would suggest that such things be simply a part of LyX 
(whether compiled in or as script in the library). Anything that supports 
LyX's goals of break[ing] the obsolete tradition of the 'typewriter 
paradigm' (i.e. count your spaces, find your errors yourself) and 
becoming an even better document preparation system should be considered 
(time and resources permitting, of course).

Jean-Marc Lasgouttes writes:
 There is a similar utility named 'lacheck'. Is it bundled on more
 distributions? If it is we could think about modifying our code to
 understand this.

Yeah, I saw that in the SuSE distro I believe.


-K
-- 
Kevin Pfeiffer [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tiros-Translations

Re: whereabouts of chktex

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

 Kevin == Kevin Pfeiffer [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Kevin But it is listed (though inactive) in the menu. 

I can make it disappear when unavailable if you prefer :)

 There is a similar utility named 'lacheck'. Is it bundled on more
 distributions? If it is we could think about modifying our code to
 understand this.

Kevin Yeah, I saw that in the SuSE distro I believe.

I would be interested to know which distribs have that. It could be a
good idea to use it if it is more mainstream than chktex, especially
since chktex can emulate it.

JMarc

Re: whereabouts of chktex

[Matej Cepl]

Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
 There is a similar utility named 'lacheck'. Is it bundled on more
 distributions? If it is we could think about modifying our code to
 understand this.

Except that chktex seems to be maintained (the latest Debian package of it
from 2005-01-01 indicates that there was New upstream version), but the
latest update on lacheck seems to be from 1998.

Matej

-- 
Matej Cepl, http://www.ceplovi.cz/matej
GPG Finger: 89EF 4BC6 288A BF43 1BAB  25C3 E09F EF25 D964 84AC
138 Highland Ave. #10, Somerville, Ma 02143, (617) 623-1488
 
Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be
a completely unintentional side effect.
  -- Linus Torvalds
 New York Times, 28 Sept 03

Re: whereabouts of chktex [Was Re: feature suggestion]

[Matej Cepl]

Kevin Pfeiffer wrote:
 But it is listed (though inactive) in the menu. So I should modify my
 previous post to say in a perfect world with a dozen full-time LyX
 programmers I would suggest that such things be simply a part of LyX
 (whether compiled in or as script in the library). Anything that supports
 LyX's goals of break[ing] the obsolete tradition of the 'typewriter
 paradigm' (i.e. count your spaces, find your errors yourself) and
 becoming an even better document preparation system should be considered
 (time and resources permitting, of course).

Hmm, so LyX people should maintain special TeX distribution, ... right?

Matej

-- 
Matej Cepl, http://www.ceplovi.cz/matej
GPG Finger: 89EF 4BC6 288A BF43 1BAB  25C3 E09F EF25 D964 84AC
138 Highland Ave. #10, Somerville, Ma 02143, (617) 623-1488
 
Give your heartache to him. (1Pt 5,7; Mt 11:28-30)

Re: whereabouts of chktex [Was Re: feature suggestion]

[Kevin Pfeiffer]

Matej Cepl writes:
 Hmm, so LyX people should maintain special TeX distribution, ... right?

I understand your point (I should probably instead be saying this useful 
utility should also be in every TeX distribution or something), but you 
see, to some of us laypeople, used to page layout programs, word 
processors, etc., there is no distinction between the TeX package and the 
LyX package---well, maybe in the sense of front end / back end. I only 
know of TeX because of LyX (not entirely true, but for the argument's 
sake). And I know no more about TeX than LyX forces me to. :-)

But, a short, practical suggestion: since it's already in the menu, 
perhaps it should also be listed in the LaTeX Configuration document that 
LyX generates (under Help menu) as an optional (TeX) package, along with 
a brief description of what it can do?

-K

-- 
Kevin Pfeiffer [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tiros-Translations

Re: whereabouts of chktex

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

 Matej == Matej Cepl [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Matej Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
 There is a similar utility named 'lacheck'. Is it bundled on more
 distributions? If it is we could think about modifying our code to
 understand this.

Matej Except that chktex seems to be maintained (the latest Debian
Matej package of it from 2005-01-01 indicates that there was New
Matej upstream version), but the latest update on lacheck seems to
Matej be from 1998.

Indeed. I thought lacheck was reasonably maintained inside of AUCTeX,
but it seems that it is not the case.

JMarc

Re: whereabouts of chktex [Was Re: feature suggestion]

[Matej Cepl]

Kevin Pfeiffer wrote:
 see, to some of us laypeople, used to page layout programs, word
 processors, etc., there is no distinction between the TeX package and the
 LyX package---well, maybe in the sense of front end / back end. I only
 know of TeX because of LyX (not entirely true, but for the argument's
 sake). And I know no more about TeX than LyX forces me to. :-)

I am sorry, I really did not mean to put you down (I am more used to naive
reactions from people using Windows :-) -- no offense intended). Of course,
I do remember my own original questions, and I could just pray that you
will not find them somewhere in archives of some conferences (fortunately,
they were usually in Czech, so that could help).

It could be interesting to make chktex part of tetex (foundation of most TeX
distributions; it's email list is tetex@dbs.uni-hannover.de; also available
as newsgroup gmane.comp.tex.tetex.general on gmane.org), but what I really
meant is that you should send an email to maintainers of your distribution
complaining to them about missing package. Tell them it is really small
program, simple to package (.deb file -- equivalent of .rpm packages on
Debian -- has 93K and that includes rather extensive documentation) and
that users of LaTeX would be glad to have it. If they have at least small
interest in their users' opinion, they should do it. And if not, you know
something more about them :-).

 But, a short, practical suggestion: since it's already in the menu,
 perhaps it should also be listed in the LaTeX Configuration document that
 LyX generates (under Help menu) as an optional (TeX) package, along with
 a brief description of what it can do?

Yes, this is a very good idea. Go to http://bugzilla.lyx.org and file a wish
about it (so it is recorded for eternity and somebody could actually do
something about that).

Best,

Matej

-- 
Matej Cepl, http://www.ceplovi.cz/matej
GPG Finger: 89EF 4BC6 288A BF43 1BAB  25C3 E09F EF25 D964 84AC
138 Highland Ave. #10, Somerville, Ma 02143, (617) 623-1488
 
Of course I'm respectable. I'm old. Politicians, ugly buildings,
and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.
  --John Huston in Chinatown.

Re: whereabouts of chktex [Was Re: feature suggestion]

[Angus Leeming]

Kevin Pfeiffer wrote:

 [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 Here's an alternative take on this problem. Why not use 'chktex' or a
 similar approach. For those who don't know 'chktex', it's a parser that
 detects common errors and mistakes, and it works with lyx if you have
 it installed. (Under Edit-CheckTeX I think).
 
 Not installed on my system (SuSE 9,3); I also couldn't find it in the
 main distribution. Is it perhaps contained in a packge that goes by
 another name?

Try clicking on the very first entry returned by googling on chktex...
http://baruch.ev-en.org/proj/chktex/

-- 
Angus

Re: whereabouts of chktex [Was Re: feature suggestion]

[Matej Cepl]

Kevin Pfeiffer wrote:
  Not installed on my system (SuSE 9,3)

Well, then you should complain to the maintainers of your distribution --
Debian has it :-).

 Perhaps this should be included with LyX (and since there is already a
 menu hook to it) -- or is it already (though not in my distro)?

No, it shouldn't be certainly included in LyX. I do not think it is a good
idea to fix broken distribution by bundling it all together with LyX (have
you heard about do one thing, and do it perfectly principle?). Will you
expect LyX maintainers to maintain it, so they have something to do in
their plenty of spare time?

Moreover, chktex is so simple program that anybody could make .rpm/.deb out
of it. I did it myself (many years ago, when I was still with RedHat) as my
first .rpm package and even though I knew next to nothing about packaging I
did it in an hour or so.

Best,

Matej

-- 
Matej Cepl, http://www.ceplovi.cz/matej
GPG Finger: 89EF 4BC6 288A BF43 1BAB  25C3 E09F EF25 D964 84AC
138 Highland Ave. #10, Somerville, Ma 02143, (617) 623-1488
 
Give your heartache to him. (1Pt 5,7; Mt 11:28-30)

Re: whereabouts of chktex [Was Re: feature suggestion]

[Matej Cepl]

Kevin Pfeiffer wrote:
 Try clicking on the very first entry returned by googling on
 chktex... http://baruch.ev-en.org/proj/chktex/
 
 That would be much too easy. :-) I guess I assumed that it should be
 included in the usual packages  or even in the LyX distribution.

BTW, just one more thing -- is http://rpmfind.net still around?

Matej

-- 
Matej Cepl, http://www.ceplovi.cz/matej
GPG Finger: 89EF 4BC6 288A BF43 1BAB  25C3 E09F EF25 D964 84AC
138 Highland Ave. #10, Somerville, Ma 02143, (617) 623-1488
 
See, when the GOVERNMENT spends money, it creates jobs; whereas
when the money is left in the hands of TAXPAYERS, God only knows
what they do with it. Bake it into pies, probably. Anything to
avoid creating jobs.
-- Dave Barry

Re: whereabouts of chktex [Was Re: feature suggestion]

[Angus Leeming]

Matej Cepl wrote:

Not installed on my system (SuSE 9,3)



Well, then you should complain to the maintainers of your distribution --
Debian has it :-).


Incidentally, Matej, which Debian flavour do you use? I have a machine 
running Debian unstable at work and keeping it up to date is, not 
surprisingly, a continual battle. Indeed, it would be impractical to use at 
home. However, Debian stable is, well a little to stable :)


I quite like the Fedora twice yearly update cycle, but also like Debian's 
you don't need to reinstall the entire machine, just update the packages 
as and when they are improved.


How to square this circle?

Angus

Re: whereabouts of chktex

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

 Matej == Matej Cepl [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Matej No, it shouldn't be certainly included in LyX. I do not think
Matej it is a good idea to fix broken distribution by bundling it all
Matej together with LyX (have you heard about do one thing, and do
Matej it perfectly principle?). Will you expect LyX maintainers to
Matej maintain it, so they have something to do in their plenty of
Matej spare time?

Indeed.

Matej Moreover, chktex is so simple program that anybody could make
Matej .rpm/.deb out of it. I did it myself (many years ago, when I
Matej was still with RedHat) as my first .rpm package and even though
Matej I knew next to nothing about packaging I did it in an hour or
Matej so.

And I will be glad to host it on ftp.lyx.org.

There is a similar utility named 'lacheck'. Is it bundled on more
distributions? If it is we could think about modifying our code to
understand this.

JMarc

Re: whereabouts of chktex [Was Re: feature suggestion]

[Matej Cepl]

Angus Leeming wrote:
 Incidentally, Matej, which Debian flavour do you use?

testing (soon to be stable, but I will probably keep with testing).

 I have a machine 
 running Debian unstable at work and keeping it up to date is, not
 surprisingly, a continual battle.

Unstable is really, well, unstable. With testing I am able to somehow work
over dial-up (that somehow is that aptitude update downloads 3MB+ of
data, and that sucks) with occasional taking notebook to some friendly
Internet cafe or university, when I want to actually upgrade (that could be
100MB+ of packages, especially when KDE is upgraded, which was pretty often
this year). If you have broadband at home, then I do not see any problem
with Debian/testing whatsoever. It is just six months of experience but I
have never experienced any hiccup with testing (and I know there were some
with unstable, even though it was kept slightly back, because sarge was
being frozen last year). It may get slightly wilder ride when unstable will
be open wide again and we could get some broken packages into testing --
but then certainly sid will be more broken then it is now as well, so eck
will be still much better choice IMHO.

 Indeed, it would be impractical to use 
 at home. However, Debian stable is, well a little to stable :)

I was able to work with Debian stable until the spring of this year with a
lot of backports http://www.backports.org and KDE backports, but when I
got a new computer, I gave up on that and have been using sarge since then,
and it serves me pretty well.

 I quite like the Fedora twice yearly update cycle, but also like Debian's
 you don't need to reinstall the entire machine, just update the packages
 as and when they are improved.

I do not know anything about Fedora (I gave up on RedHat when it was IIRC
7.0), but ability of Debian people to held whole distribution together so
well as they do never stops to amaze me (and the fact, that I do not have
to hunt packages all over the Internet anymore). And yes I am willing to
pay price in getting slower updates than rest of the world -- when it is
just slightly slower, not woody.

Best,

Matej

-- 
Matej Cepl, http://www.ceplovi.cz/matej
GPG Finger: 89EF 4BC6 288A BF43 1BAB  25C3 E09F EF25 D964 84AC
138 Highland Ave. #10, Somerville, Ma 02143, (617) 623-1488
 
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as
the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to
steal bread.
-- Anatole France

Re: whereabouts of chktex [Was Re: feature suggestion]

[Kevin Pfeiffer]

Matej Cepl writes:
 No, it shouldn't be certainly included in LyX. I do not think it is a
 good idea to fix broken distribution by bundling it all together with
 LyX (have you heard about do one thing, and do it perfectly
 principle?). Will you expect LyX maintainers to maintain it, so they
 have something to do in their plenty of spare time?

:-) (Yeah, I almost added the words in a perfect world to my original 
post)

But it is listed (though inactive) in the menu. So I should modify my 
previous post to say in a perfect world with a dozen full-time LyX 
programmers I would suggest that such things be simply a part of LyX 
(whether compiled in or as script in the library). Anything that supports 
LyX's goals of break[ing] the obsolete tradition of the 'typewriter 
paradigm' (i.e. count your spaces, find your errors yourself) and 
becoming an even better document preparation system should be considered 
(time and resources permitting, of course).

Jean-Marc Lasgouttes writes:
 There is a similar utility named 'lacheck'. Is it bundled on more
 distributions? If it is we could think about modifying our code to
 understand this.

Yeah, I saw that in the SuSE distro I believe.


-K
-- 
Kevin Pfeiffer [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tiros-Translations

Re: whereabouts of chktex

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

 Kevin == Kevin Pfeiffer [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Kevin But it is listed (though inactive) in the menu. 

I can make it disappear when unavailable if you prefer :)

 There is a similar utility named 'lacheck'. Is it bundled on more
 distributions? If it is we could think about modifying our code to
 understand this.

Kevin Yeah, I saw that in the SuSE distro I believe.

I would be interested to know which distribs have that. It could be a
good idea to use it if it is more mainstream than chktex, especially
since chktex can emulate it.

JMarc

Re: whereabouts of chktex

[Matej Cepl]

Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
 There is a similar utility named 'lacheck'. Is it bundled on more
 distributions? If it is we could think about modifying our code to
 understand this.

Except that chktex seems to be maintained (the latest Debian package of it
from 2005-01-01 indicates that there was New upstream version), but the
latest update on lacheck seems to be from 1998.

Matej

-- 
Matej Cepl, http://www.ceplovi.cz/matej
GPG Finger: 89EF 4BC6 288A BF43 1BAB  25C3 E09F EF25 D964 84AC
138 Highland Ave. #10, Somerville, Ma 02143, (617) 623-1488
 
Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be
a completely unintentional side effect.
  -- Linus Torvalds
 New York Times, 28 Sept 03

Re: whereabouts of chktex [Was Re: feature suggestion]

[Matej Cepl]

Kevin Pfeiffer wrote:
 But it is listed (though inactive) in the menu. So I should modify my
 previous post to say in a perfect world with a dozen full-time LyX
 programmers I would suggest that such things be simply a part of LyX
 (whether compiled in or as script in the library). Anything that supports
 LyX's goals of break[ing] the obsolete tradition of the 'typewriter
 paradigm' (i.e. count your spaces, find your errors yourself) and
 becoming an even better document preparation system should be considered
 (time and resources permitting, of course).

Hmm, so LyX people should maintain special TeX distribution, ... right?

Matej

-- 
Matej Cepl, http://www.ceplovi.cz/matej
GPG Finger: 89EF 4BC6 288A BF43 1BAB  25C3 E09F EF25 D964 84AC
138 Highland Ave. #10, Somerville, Ma 02143, (617) 623-1488
 
Give your heartache to him. (1Pt 5,7; Mt 11:28-30)

Re: whereabouts of chktex [Was Re: feature suggestion]

[Kevin Pfeiffer]

Matej Cepl writes:
 Hmm, so LyX people should maintain special TeX distribution, ... right?

I understand your point (I should probably instead be saying this useful 
utility should also be in every TeX distribution or something), but you 
see, to some of us laypeople, used to page layout programs, word 
processors, etc., there is no distinction between the TeX package and the 
LyX package---well, maybe in the sense of front end / back end. I only 
know of TeX because of LyX (not entirely true, but for the argument's 
sake). And I know no more about TeX than LyX forces me to. :-)

But, a short, practical suggestion: since it's already in the menu, 
perhaps it should also be listed in the LaTeX Configuration document that 
LyX generates (under Help menu) as an optional (TeX) package, along with 
a brief description of what it can do?

-K

-- 
Kevin Pfeiffer [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tiros-Translations

Re: whereabouts of chktex

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

 Matej == Matej Cepl [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Matej Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
 There is a similar utility named 'lacheck'. Is it bundled on more
 distributions? If it is we could think about modifying our code to
 understand this.

Matej Except that chktex seems to be maintained (the latest Debian
Matej package of it from 2005-01-01 indicates that there was New
Matej upstream version), but the latest update on lacheck seems to
Matej be from 1998.

Indeed. I thought lacheck was reasonably maintained inside of AUCTeX,
but it seems that it is not the case.

JMarc

Re: whereabouts of chktex [Was Re: feature suggestion]

[Matej Cepl]

Kevin Pfeiffer wrote:
 see, to some of us laypeople, used to page layout programs, word
 processors, etc., there is no distinction between the TeX package and the
 LyX package---well, maybe in the sense of front end / back end. I only
 know of TeX because of LyX (not entirely true, but for the argument's
 sake). And I know no more about TeX than LyX forces me to. :-)

I am sorry, I really did not mean to put you down (I am more used to naive
reactions from people using Windows :-) -- no offense intended). Of course,
I do remember my own original questions, and I could just pray that you
will not find them somewhere in archives of some conferences (fortunately,
they were usually in Czech, so that could help).

It could be interesting to make chktex part of tetex (foundation of most TeX
distributions; it's email list is tetex@dbs.uni-hannover.de; also available
as newsgroup gmane.comp.tex.tetex.general on gmane.org), but what I really
meant is that you should send an email to maintainers of your distribution
complaining to them about missing package. Tell them it is really small
program, simple to package (.deb file -- equivalent of .rpm packages on
Debian -- has 93K and that includes rather extensive documentation) and
that users of LaTeX would be glad to have it. If they have at least small
interest in their users' opinion, they should do it. And if not, you know
something more about them :-).

 But, a short, practical suggestion: since it's already in the menu,
 perhaps it should also be listed in the LaTeX Configuration document that
 LyX generates (under Help menu) as an optional (TeX) package, along with
 a brief description of what it can do?

Yes, this is a very good idea. Go to http://bugzilla.lyx.org and file a wish
about it (so it is recorded for eternity and somebody could actually do
something about that).

Best,

Matej

-- 
Matej Cepl, http://www.ceplovi.cz/matej
GPG Finger: 89EF 4BC6 288A BF43 1BAB  25C3 E09F EF25 D964 84AC
138 Highland Ave. #10, Somerville, Ma 02143, (617) 623-1488
 
Of course I'm respectable. I'm old. Politicians, ugly buildings,
and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.
  --John Huston in Chinatown.

Re: whereabouts of chktex [Was Re: feature suggestion]

[Angus Leeming]

Kevin Pfeiffer wrote:

> [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>> Here's an alternative take on this problem. Why not use 'chktex' or a
>> similar approach. For those who don't know 'chktex', it's a parser that
>> detects common errors and mistakes, and it works with lyx if you have
>> it installed. (Under Edit->CheckTeX I think).
> 
> Not installed on my system (SuSE 9,3); I also couldn't find it in the
> main distribution. Is it perhaps contained in a packge that goes by
> another name?

Try clicking on the very first entry returned by googling on "chktex"...
http://baruch.ev-en.org/proj/chktex/

-- 
Angus

Re: whereabouts of chktex [Was Re: feature suggestion]

[Matej Cepl]

Kevin Pfeiffer wrote:
>> > Not installed on my system (SuSE 9,3)

Well, then you should complain to the maintainers of your distribution --
Debian has it :-).

> Perhaps this should be included with LyX (and since there is already a
> menu hook to it) -- or is it already (though not in my distro)?

No, it shouldn't be certainly included in LyX. I do not think it is a good
idea to fix broken distribution by bundling it all together with LyX (have
you heard about "do one thing, and do it perfectly" principle?). Will you
expect LyX maintainers to maintain it, so they have something to do in
their plenty of spare time?

Moreover, chktex is so simple program that anybody could make .rpm/.deb out
of it. I did it myself (many years ago, when I was still with RedHat) as my
first .rpm package and even though I knew next to nothing about packaging I
did it in an hour or so.

Best,

Matej

-- 
Matej Cepl, http://www.ceplovi.cz/matej
GPG Finger: 89EF 4BC6 288A BF43 1BAB  25C3 E09F EF25 D964 84AC
138 Highland Ave. #10, Somerville, Ma 02143, (617) 623-1488
 
Give your heartache to him. (1Pt 5,7; Mt 11:28-30)

Re: whereabouts of chktex [Was Re: feature suggestion]

[Matej Cepl]

Kevin Pfeiffer wrote:
>> Try clicking on the very first entry returned by googling on
>> "chktex"... http://baruch.ev-en.org/proj/chktex/
> 
> That would be much too easy. :-) I guess I assumed that it should be
> included in the "usual packages"  or even in the LyX distribution.

BTW, just one more thing -- is http://rpmfind.net still around?

Matej

-- 
Matej Cepl, http://www.ceplovi.cz/matej
GPG Finger: 89EF 4BC6 288A BF43 1BAB  25C3 E09F EF25 D964 84AC
138 Highland Ave. #10, Somerville, Ma 02143, (617) 623-1488
 
See, when the GOVERNMENT spends money, it creates jobs; whereas
when the money is left in the hands of TAXPAYERS, God only knows
what they do with it. Bake it into pies, probably. Anything to
avoid creating jobs.
-- Dave Barry

Re: whereabouts of chktex [Was Re: feature suggestion]

[Angus Leeming]

Matej Cepl wrote:

Not installed on my system (SuSE 9,3)



Well, then you should complain to the maintainers of your distribution --
Debian has it :-).


Incidentally, Matej, which Debian flavour do you use? I have a machine 
running Debian unstable at work and keeping it up to date is, not 
surprisingly, a continual battle. Indeed, it would be impractical to use at 
home. However, Debian stable is, well a little to stable :)


I quite like the Fedora twice yearly update cycle, but also like Debian's 
"you don't need to reinstall the entire machine, just update the packages 
as and when they are improved".


How to square this circle?

Angus

Re: whereabouts of chktex

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

> "Matej" == Matej Cepl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

Matej> No, it shouldn't be certainly included in LyX. I do not think
Matej> it is a good idea to fix broken distribution by bundling it all
Matej> together with LyX (have you heard about "do one thing, and do
Matej> it perfectly" principle?). Will you expect LyX maintainers to
Matej> maintain it, so they have something to do in their plenty of
Matej> spare time?

Indeed.

Matej> Moreover, chktex is so simple program that anybody could make
Matej> .rpm/.deb out of it. I did it myself (many years ago, when I
Matej> was still with RedHat) as my first .rpm package and even though
Matej> I knew next to nothing about packaging I did it in an hour or
Matej> so.

And I will be glad to host it on ftp.lyx.org.

There is a similar utility named 'lacheck'. Is it bundled on more
distributions? If it is we could think about modifying our code to
understand this.

JMarc

Re: whereabouts of chktex [Was Re: feature suggestion]

[Matej Cepl]

Angus Leeming wrote:
> Incidentally, Matej, which Debian flavour do you use?

testing (soon to be stable, but I will probably keep with testing).

> I have a machine 
> running Debian unstable at work and keeping it up to date is, not
> surprisingly, a continual battle.

Unstable is really, well, unstable. With testing I am able to somehow work
over dial-up (that "somehow" is that aptitude update downloads 3MB+ of
data, and that sucks) with occasional taking notebook to some friendly
Internet cafe or university, when I want to actually upgrade (that could be
100MB+ of packages, especially when KDE is upgraded, which was pretty often
this year). If you have broadband at home, then I do not see any problem
with Debian/testing whatsoever. It is just six months of experience but I
have never experienced any hiccup with testing (and I know there were some
with unstable, even though it was kept slightly back, because sarge was
being frozen last year). It may get slightly wilder ride when unstable will
be open wide again and we could get some broken packages into testing --
but then certainly sid will be more broken then it is now as well, so eck
will be still much better choice IMHO.

> Indeed, it would be impractical to use 
> at home. However, Debian stable is, well a little to stable :)

I was able to work with Debian stable until the spring of this year with a
lot of backports  and KDE backports, but when I
got a new computer, I gave up on that and have been using sarge since then,
and it serves me pretty well.

> I quite like the Fedora twice yearly update cycle, but also like Debian's
> "you don't need to reinstall the entire machine, just update the packages
> as and when they are improved".

I do not know anything about Fedora (I gave up on RedHat when it was IIRC
7.0), but ability of Debian people to held whole distribution together so
well as they do never stops to amaze me (and the fact, that I do not have
to hunt packages all over the Internet anymore). And yes I am willing to
pay price in getting slower updates than rest of the world -- when it is
just slightly slower, not woody.

Best,

Matej

-- 
Matej Cepl, http://www.ceplovi.cz/matej
GPG Finger: 89EF 4BC6 288A BF43 1BAB  25C3 E09F EF25 D964 84AC
138 Highland Ave. #10, Somerville, Ma 02143, (617) 623-1488
 
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as
the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to
steal bread.
-- Anatole France

Re: whereabouts of chktex [Was Re: feature suggestion]

[Kevin Pfeiffer]

Matej Cepl writes:
> No, it shouldn't be certainly included in LyX. I do not think it is a
> good idea to fix broken distribution by bundling it all together with
> LyX (have you heard about "do one thing, and do it perfectly"
> principle?). Will you expect LyX maintainers to maintain it, so they
> have something to do in their plenty of spare time?

:-) (Yeah, I almost added the words "in a perfect world" to my original 
post)

But it is listed (though inactive) in the menu. So I should modify my 
previous post to say "in a perfect world with a dozen full-time LyX 
programmers I would suggest that such things be simply a part of LyX 
(whether compiled in or as script in the library). Anything that supports 
LyX's goals of "break[ing] the obsolete tradition of the 'typewriter 
paradigm'" (i.e. "count your spaces, find your errors yourself") and 
becoming an even better document preparation system should be considered 
(time and resources permitting, of course).

Jean-Marc Lasgouttes writes:
> There is a similar utility named 'lacheck'. Is it bundled on more
> distributions? If it is we could think about modifying our code to
> understand this.

Yeah, I saw that in the SuSE distro I believe.


-K
-- 
Kevin Pfeiffer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Tiros-Translations

Re: whereabouts of chktex

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

> "Kevin" == Kevin Pfeiffer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

Kevin> But it is listed (though inactive) in the menu. 

I can make it disappear when unavailable if you prefer :)

>> There is a similar utility named 'lacheck'. Is it bundled on more
>> distributions? If it is we could think about modifying our code to
>> understand this.

Kevin> Yeah, I saw that in the SuSE distro I believe.

I would be interested to know which distribs have that. It could be a
good idea to use it if it is more mainstream than chktex, especially
since chktex can emulate it.

JMarc

Re: whereabouts of chktex

[Matej Cepl]

Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
> There is a similar utility named 'lacheck'. Is it bundled on more
> distributions? If it is we could think about modifying our code to
> understand this.

Except that chktex seems to be maintained (the latest Debian package of it
from 2005-01-01 indicates that there was "New upstream version"), but the
latest update on lacheck seems to be from 1998.

Matej

-- 
Matej Cepl, http://www.ceplovi.cz/matej
GPG Finger: 89EF 4BC6 288A BF43 1BAB  25C3 E09F EF25 D964 84AC
138 Highland Ave. #10, Somerville, Ma 02143, (617) 623-1488
 
Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be
a completely unintentional side effect.
  -- Linus Torvalds
 New York Times, 28 Sept 03

Re: whereabouts of chktex [Was Re: feature suggestion]

[Matej Cepl]

Kevin Pfeiffer wrote:
> But it is listed (though inactive) in the menu. So I should modify my
> previous post to say "in a perfect world with a dozen full-time LyX
> programmers I would suggest that such things be simply a part of LyX
> (whether compiled in or as script in the library). Anything that supports
> LyX's goals of "break[ing] the obsolete tradition of the 'typewriter
> paradigm'" (i.e. "count your spaces, find your errors yourself") and
> becoming an even better document preparation system should be considered
> (time and resources permitting, of course).

Hmm, so LyX people should maintain special TeX distribution, ... right?

Matej

-- 
Matej Cepl, http://www.ceplovi.cz/matej
GPG Finger: 89EF 4BC6 288A BF43 1BAB  25C3 E09F EF25 D964 84AC
138 Highland Ave. #10, Somerville, Ma 02143, (617) 623-1488
 
Give your heartache to him. (1Pt 5,7; Mt 11:28-30)

Re: whereabouts of chktex [Was Re: feature suggestion]

[Kevin Pfeiffer]

Matej Cepl writes:
> Hmm, so LyX people should maintain special TeX distribution, ... right?

I understand your point (I should probably instead be saying "this useful 
utility should also be in every TeX distribution" or something), but you 
see, to some of us laypeople, used to page layout programs, word 
processors, etc., there is no distinction between the TeX package and the 
LyX package---well, maybe in the sense of "front end / back end". I only 
know of TeX because of LyX (not entirely true, but for the argument's 
sake). And I know no more about TeX than LyX forces me to. :-)

But, a short, practical suggestion: since it's already in the menu, 
perhaps it should also be listed in the LaTeX Configuration document that 
LyX generates (under Help menu) as an optional (TeX) package, along with 
a brief description of what it can do?

-K

-- 
Kevin Pfeiffer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Tiros-Translations

Re: whereabouts of chktex

[Jean-Marc Lasgouttes]

> "Matej" == Matej Cepl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

Matej> Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
>> There is a similar utility named 'lacheck'. Is it bundled on more
>> distributions? If it is we could think about modifying our code to
>> understand this.

Matej> Except that chktex seems to be maintained (the latest Debian
Matej> package of it from 2005-01-01 indicates that there was "New
Matej> upstream version"), but the latest update on lacheck seems to
Matej> be from 1998.

Indeed. I thought lacheck was reasonably maintained inside of AUCTeX,
but it seems that it is not the case.

JMarc

Re: whereabouts of chktex [Was Re: feature suggestion]

[Matej Cepl]

Kevin Pfeiffer wrote:
> see, to some of us laypeople, used to page layout programs, word
> processors, etc., there is no distinction between the TeX package and the
> LyX package---well, maybe in the sense of "front end / back end". I only
> know of TeX because of LyX (not entirely true, but for the argument's
> sake). And I know no more about TeX than LyX forces me to. :-)

I am sorry, I really did not mean to put you down (I am more used to naive
reactions from people using Windows :-) -- no offense intended). Of course,
I do remember my own original questions, and I could just pray that you
will not find them somewhere in archives of some conferences (fortunately,
they were usually in Czech, so that could help).

It could be interesting to make chktex part of tetex (foundation of most TeX
distributions; it's email list is tetex@dbs.uni-hannover.de; also available
as newsgroup gmane.comp.tex.tetex.general on gmane.org), but what I really
meant is that you should send an email to maintainers of your distribution
complaining to them about missing package. Tell them it is really small
program, simple to package (.deb file -- equivalent of .rpm packages on
Debian -- has 93K and that includes rather extensive documentation) and
that users of LaTeX would be glad to have it. If they have at least small
interest in their users' opinion, they should do it. And if not, you know
something more about them :-).

> But, a short, practical suggestion: since it's already in the menu,
> perhaps it should also be listed in the LaTeX Configuration document that
> LyX generates (under Help menu) as an optional (TeX) package, along with
> a brief description of what it can do?

Yes, this is a very good idea. Go to http://bugzilla.lyx.org and file a wish
about it (so it is recorded for eternity and somebody could actually do
something about that).

Best,

Matej

-- 
Matej Cepl, http://www.ceplovi.cz/matej
GPG Finger: 89EF 4BC6 288A BF43 1BAB  25C3 E09F EF25 D964 84AC
138 Highland Ave. #10, Somerville, Ma 02143, (617) 623-1488
 
Of course I'm respectable. I'm old. Politicians, ugly buildings,
and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.
  --John Huston in "Chinatown."