>>>>> "Rainer" == Rainer Heilke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

Rainer> 1) people needing to use svn/Mercurial to download the PDF files
[...]
Rainer> I would argue either option is unacceptable. (1) has far too
Rainer> much complexity involved--people just want to click on the
Rainer> tarball and download it. 

I think this is the crux of the issue.  A single click on a tarball is
easy, but if someone is at the end of a slow link, how big does the
tarball have to be before the download time becomes unacceptable?

As for complexity... both Mercurial and Subversion are bundled in
OpenSolaris.  There's a one-time command to set up a local copy of the
repo, and one command to do an update.  We could post both commands on
the web page, where they could be pasted into a terminal window.  I'm
finding it very hard to believe that this is prohibitively complicated.

Rainer> Actually, a two-time operation if I understand
Rainer> correctly. Michelle needs to do it at her end, and I have have
Rainer> to as well.

No, Michelle would only need to do that if she puts the XML source files
in a repo.  Where the XML sources live is independent of where the PDFs
live.

Rainer> My script runs on everything in the (local to me) directory the
Rainer> XML sources go into.

Mike> Sounds like a job for make(1), then.

Rainer> I've never built makefiles, only having done minor edits to the
Rainer> ocassional one. I can't see this being easier than the shell
Rainer> script I wrote.

Well, we could certainly help you with the makefile setup if you wished.
 
Since I'm not personally affected by the download method, I'm not going
to pursue this further.  If you want to stick with the tarball scheme,
that's up to you.  If you start getting complaints from people who
actually have to deal with the download time, the SCM-based approach
will still be available.

mike

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