[tex-live] Should .tds.zip be encouraged?

[Dan&Jan Luecking]

Jim Hefferon 
<mailto:tex-live%40tug.org?Subject=Re%3A%20%5Btex-live%5D%20Should%20.tds.zip%20be%20encouraged%3F&In-Reply-To=%3C1261656921.11126.12.camel%40alan.mikenet.smcvt.edu%3E>ftpmaint 
at alan.smcvt.edu
Thu Dec 24 13:15:21 CET 2009 wrote:

>On Thu, 2009-12-24 at 12:27 +0100, Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard wrote:
>
> > So, every document advertising .tds.zip should make it clear that
> > it is *not* the required format and people should upload archives
> > to this format only if they wish *and* are sure they are able to get it
> > right.
>
>As a remark: that I can think of, there are no longer instructional
>references to .tds.zip files that are accessible by browsing from the
>canonical address here, tug.ctan.org .  Put another way: the
>TDS-guidelines web page mentioned earlier can only be reached only if
>you know the exact url.  We keep that page up because it makes sense to
>have it sometimes, but it was omitted from the main html tree because of
>exactly the concern that you've expressed that there could be a
>misunderstanding about expectations.

The main CTAN page
   http://tug.ctan.org/
links to an upload page (under "Helping Others"):
   http://tug.ctan.org/upload.html
which suggests reading:
   http://tug.org/texlive/pkgcontrib.html
which does not _recommend_ a tds.zip, but does suggest a TDS
directory structure for "complex packages". If an author
builds a TDS tree, it is no extra work to send a .tds.zip
file. This is how I came to believe that TDS was at least
welcome, and why I redid mfpic along those lines for version 1.0.


Dan

Dan Luecking
Dept. of Mathematical Sciences
1 University of Arkansas
Fayetteville, Arkansas 72701