Re: Some ArabTeX issues

[Munzir Taha <munzirtaha at newhorizons dot com dot sa>]

On Yaum al-Khamees 08 Thu al-Qi`dah 1424 07:32 pm, Prof Klaus Lagally wrote:
> hello Munzir,

Hello Mr. Klaus,
I have made a new rpm to ArabTeX and come across some of the old issues 
again.

> scripsit Munzir Taha:
> > These are some issues which I have met across while make the rpm or
> > testing ArabTeX. I am sure Prof. Lagally will jump in as usual to help:

> > * It's better to have something like arabtex-3.11d.tar.bz2 on your ftp
> > site
> I will see to that when I get back to the office next week.

Is your office that far? ;)
1. Please, make arabtex-3.11k.tar.bz2
Mr. Lagally this point is not cosmetic. Besides bz2 has better compression, 
generally, Mandrake requires/recommend bz2 for making an rpm. A link to this 
bz2 file should be in the spec file at the SOURCE tag. The source file name 
must be at the end of the line as the final element in a path. This makes any 
one who wants to see the last update to know the original source place. RPM 
will ignore everything prior to the  filename. I don't like to enter 
misleading information in the rpm.

2. I would also like to suggest that this file should mirror the same hirarchy 
of the site. I mean it should contains
announce.txt............................. 
apatch.sty............................... -> texinput/apatch.sty
arabtex.tex..............................  -> texinput/arabtex.tex
changes.txt.............................. Apr 26 2004 23:43         74308
doc......................................  Directory
examples.................................Directory
hebtex.tex...............................  -> texinput/hebtex.tex
hepatch.sty..............................-> texinput/hepatch.sty
install.txt.............................. 
laser.pk................................. Directory
lppl.txt................................. 
mfinput.................................. Directory
psfonts.................................. Directory
readme.txt............................... 
texinput................................. Directory
tfm........................................Directory
compressed by bz2 and contains the latest version of the apatch.sty, ...This 
file should be labeled with its minor version number (e.g. 
arabtex-3.11k.tar.bz2) for the person who wants to download the whole package 
and don't want just the patch.

This is not the case now. It is a .tgz file with 3 folders (doc, fonts and 
tex) from which you delve deeply in a rather redundat way. for example you 
open tex to find a folder called latex, you open latex to find a folder 
called arabtex on which you find the files. No need for this tex/latex. The 
rpm will take care about where to put the files in the distro accordingly.

3. Does arabtex requires a specific version of tetex (e.g tetex >= 1.0.7)?

> > * arabtex/doc/tetex.txt contains 10kB of nothing/blanks, any secret here?
> > ;)
>
> No idea; did not notice that. This file comes from a user, without
> any promises. There *might* be a secret I do not know :-)

4. Please remove this easter-egg-like thing. 

5. ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pub/arabtex/changes.txt
states Version 3.11i as the last version though it should be 3.11k

6. I downloaded arab311.tgz, it contains a zero-size file called arabtex.tar 
This should be removed

7. http://leb.net/arabtex is not working. Do you have any relation with them?

8. You can find a copy of the source rpm at  
ftp://ftp.linux-mandrake.com/incoming/ if you have a platform to test.

9. Would you also please announce on arabeyes.org mailing list when you make a 
new version of fix a bug so any one intersted in updating the rpm would know?

10. Thanks for your great work.

-- 
Munzir Taha  PGP Key available
gpg --recv-keys --keyserver www.mandrakesecure.net F0671821

Telecommunications and Electronics Engineer
Linux Registered User #279362 at http://counter.li.org
Mandrake Club member
Maintainer of Mandrake Arabization Project Status (MAPS)
http://www.arabeyes.org/download/documents/distros/mdkarabicsupport-en/
CIW Designer, ICDL, MOUS
New Horizons CLC
Riyadh, SA