Mojca Miklavec <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 10:33, Robin Fairbairns wrote: > > > > i had understood that shortdesc and longdesc *always* came from ctan, if > > ctan is the source. > > One can also provide the information in tlpsrc files for TeX Live. > > >> The majority of > >> packages entirely lacks any description at all. > > > > there are certainly ctan packages that lack a description, or even (in > > some cases) a catalogue entry. Â hyphenation patterns often lack > > description, since the original authors often submitted them without any > > explanatory text -- in which case the catalogue entry only contains > > a description if i happen to know something about the background. > > > > i can certainly plug in a description for one that's missing it, given > > some text; if you'll alert me to where you've updated tlpsrc (and hence > > texlive.tlpdb) i can back-fit it. Â what i don't know is whether there is > > a danger of things not appearing in tlpdb if they're not in the relevant > > catalogue entry. > > The main problem with current packages is that there are many > languages that don't have an entry at all and those that do have an > entry are often referring to an outdated hyphenation file (often > saying that patterns are outdated). > > So now TeX Live fetches data from descriptions of outdated patterns. > In order to fix the situation one should first create "visual > packages" of some kind that would properly refer to the new up-to-date > hyphenation files.
i see your point. most of those catalogue entries were created with little information -- in particular, i never tried the patterns for any of the entries i created, so i didn't even know what coding was employed (except in a few cases -- icelandic springs to mind, with its private oddball encoding -- ages old!). > But it might be best if I first try to do something and then come back > with a result, so that we won't start a purely teoretical discussion > (it might take me less time to implement things than to explain what > exactly I want to do). sure (there's a dilbert cartoon about this ... where a waffling presenter faints when shown an actual implemetation, or something). it's always good to know when to stop talking and start doing! ;-) what i really don't want is diddling my way through texlive.tlpdb to find descriptions i don't have; a (set of?) tlpsrc files would make my life more nearly bearable ... robin
