(La)TeX add on packages and the future

[Jonathan Underwood]

Hi,

With upstream support for tetex ended and the intention for Fedora to
shift to TeXLive, I think there's a need to decide upon some new
policies/guidelines for packaging (La)TeX related packages.

Currently, such packages are mostly named tetex-foo, falling under the
"add-on package" directive in the packaging guidelines, and they
Require tetex, tetex-latex etc. While the TeXLive packaging is still a
work in progress (as far as I know), it might be prudent to start
thinking about it at this point. The large majority of these "add-on"
packages actually are agnostic with respect to which TeX distribution
is being used. It would be nice to make these add on packages useable
with other TeX distributions that users might install - for instance
it's not inconceivable that for some legacy reasons, a user might
actually need to install the old tetex packages rather than the shiny
new TeXLive ones.

One thing I could think of is using virtual provides, eg. Provides:
TeX, LaTeX, and then extra style file packages could require those,
rather than tetex/TeXLive. What about package naming - clearly
tetex-foo won't be sensible anylonger - what about simply TeX-foo, or
tex-foo in the future?

Perhaps reading this you have better suggestions (I hope so) - if so,
pile in with them :)

Jonathan.