Broken links in the documentation of various packages

[pablgonz]

Hi, apparently the links to ctan in the attachfile2 and accsupp documentation are broken, I've checked some more packages and apparently they are too. A query related to this...all documentations have a link to TeX Catalogue but this seems to no longer exist (or I haven't been able to find them). Greetings

[davidcarlisle]

Given the age of some of these documents broken links are not impossible, but I just checked attachfile2 and the links in section 3.1 to for example CTAN:macros/latex/contrib/oberdiek/attachfile2.dtx work for me, linking to

http://ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/oberdiek/attachfile2.dtx

which in my case resolves to

http://anorien.csc.warwick.ac.uk/mirrors/CTAN/macros/latex/contrib/oberdiek/attachfile2.dtx

which works (although ctan would prefer to use https and not use tex-archive form these days)

The catalogue is no longer maintained at CTAN in the public format that Heiko was linking to, it is more or less

https://ctan.org/tex-archive/obsolete/help/Catalogue/entries

I should probably delete those sections, but was avoiding global edits on 90+ files that I didn't originally write:-)

Could you confirm which links (other than catalogue) were broken?

It is possible that not all ctan mirrors redirect http to https so it would help if you could say which mirror was being used for http://ctan.org in your case.

[pablgonz]

And the link in References, page 42

Scott Pakin: The attachfile package; 2005/02/20 v1.2; CTAN:macros/latex/
contrib/attachfile/

I think the problem is in the \CTAN macro that is used in the documentation, the references are not correct...and I think using https would be the right thing to do.

Actually the problem is in the "References" section of the docuementations. I have reviewed embedfile and hologo...The macro \CTAN that does not direct to the right place (apparently)

[davidcarlisle]

OK this is your mirror, for me the reference

http://ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/attachfile/

works fine and resolves to https://ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/attachfile/

but CTAN do ask not to use that form anyway and ask that people link to the

https://ctan.org/pkg/attachfile

form,

hmm applying a regex edit over a hundred files... what could go wrong....

I'll see what I can do..

[davidcarlisle]

I removed the catalogue sections in commit 3fb9909

[pablgonz]

I don't know if it will be my ctan mirror, but, this is the address that is addressed correctly : https://ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/attachfile/attachfile.pdf and becomes (in my case) http://ctan.dcc.uchile.cl/macros/latex/contrib/attachfile/attachfile.pdf I think ctan doesn't like that they overload their main server :)

[davidcarlisle]

I have changed the links to tds.zip files to use the form the ctan package pages use updated the .bib file references to use the https://ctan.org/pkg/zref form for each package, and changed the rest to use https not http, I would prefer to use the https://ctan.org/pkg/zref}, form in more places but as the text links to explicit tex-archive/.... paths that is tricky as a global edit.

can you build locally (the ./mkctan script should work if you have bash, not so much on windows) ?

I have not done a full build but I will do one soon (it takes an hour or so on this machine..) and could let you have a zip to try if you are interested?

[pablgonz]

! Undefined control sequence.
<argument> \CTANinstall 
             {install/macros/latex/contrib/oberdiek.tds.zip}
l.972 ...all/macros/latex/contrib/oberdiek.tds.zip}]

and with l3build ctan

No pages of output.
Transcript written on oberdiek.log.
Running checks on
  accsupp-test1 (1/94)
  alphalph-test2 (2/94)
  alphalph-test3 (3/94)
  attachfile2 (4/94)
          --> failed

[davidcarlisle]

@pablgonz sorry I just got that as well, I have only been using docstrip for 30 years, so I apparently haven't learnt that you need to edit the documented dtx file and if you just edit the .sty file (and don't check it in) it won't work for other people....

4a18cd38b2e330e4575cd1572afc965377f34828

[pablgonz]

jejejej...sometimes it happens, to all this, if you update everything, you will add the Pull requests that you have pending?

  attachfile2 (4/94)
          --> failed

[davidcarlisle]

@pablgonz on the PR, as @u-fischer comments in issue #37 there are some issues getting everything in place together, I defer to her judgement about what to do there and the timing of when to make changes. But in general for all latex not just this collection we do want it to be easier to generate PDF meeting the various accessibility standards.

On the test failure, I'll let this doc run finish, then look.

[davidcarlisle]

I broke something and then by coincidence it can;t link to my package

! Undefined control sequence.
l.3232 % \bibpackage
                  {ifthen}{David Carlisle}{2001/05/26}

@pablgonz if you are doing a full ./mkctan build you will get the same ..

[pablgonz]

@davidcarlisle :I thought the error was on my side, l3build ctan fault in some test (and creation of zip), now I'm running ./mkctan...I'll wait until it's over.

[davidcarlisle]

@pablgonz currently you can only use l3build check as until recently l3build could not cope with the requirements of this bundle with some files going to generic and some to latex etc, we (well Joseph) recently added a tds mapping feature to l3build so in principle we could probably do this with l3build now, but anyway I plan to split it in to smaller bundles (this evening was supposed to be a simple job of extracting the makerobust package before this issue made me edit every file:-)

so for now mkctan is the only way to build the package in the correct order, that was a script I reverse engineered from the original files as downloaded from ctan when we set up this repo.

[pablgonz]

@davidcarlisle It's a tremendous job you've done to keep this project up to date. I think there are still lines of ⟨*catalogue⟩ (catchfile for example) I have used :

grep -rn 'catalogue>' --include="*.*" oberdiek/

the process is over and the links are still broken... Now that I have checked this well I think there is no generic solution, the files .dtx are pointed directly in ctan and the files .pdf in some mirror.

[davidcarlisle]

@pablgonz

g/tex-archive/#

oops yes, will fix... I may try harder to find any links that are going to the package in general and make them use /pkg rather than a tex-archive path, more grepping needed...

[pablgonz]

@davidcarlisle Unfortunately that won't solve the whole problem, update my comment above.

[davidcarlisle]

@pablgonz it's getting late so I may look tomorrow, and see if I can tune the regex, I may look and see if I can extract all the href and link check the full set.

[pablgonz]

Thank you very much for the time invested, it will be great in the future to see all this running using l3build, for now you might save some time by adding --draftmode on line 62 of mkctan.

real    30m45,625s
user    27m53,810s
sys 2m11,752s

I'll be watching for updates Greetings PS: Taking advantage of the fact that you eliminated old things, maybe it will be of some use:

grep -rn '\RequirePackage{ifpdf}' --include="*.*" oberdiek/
grep -rn '\RequirePackage{ifxetex}' --include="*.*" oberdiek/

[pablgonz]

@davidcarlisle You work very fast, to all this perhaps the most important link is missing https://github.com/ho-tex/oberdiek/issues.

[davidcarlisle]

@pablgonz "https://github.com/ho-tex/oberdiek/issues" should be in the title of every doc:

% \author{Heiko Oberdiek\thanks
% {Please report any issues at https://github.com/ho-tex/oberdiek/issues}\\

I must admit I thought it was in the header of the extracted .sty as well but (looking at zref.dtx)

% Copyright (C) 2006-2012 by
%    Heiko Oberdiek <heiko.oberdiek at googlemail.com>
%    2016
%    https://github.com/ho-tex/oberdiek/issues
%

isn't used for the .sty a second preamble is used for that which still has only Heiko's email

   Heiko Oberdiek <heiko.oberdiek at googlemail.com>

and doesn't mention the "Oberdiek Package Support Group" (as maintainers, I'll fix that later, thanks)

[pablgonz]

@davidcarlisle Very fast again, maybe it'll be nicer:

% \author{Heiko Oberdiek\thanks
% {Please report any issues at \url{https://github.com/ho-tex/oberdiek/issues}}\\

[davidcarlisle]

@pablgonz oh, no link currently, hadn't noticed that:-)

[pablgonz]

@davidcarlisle Hello, some minor things (but related to the same thing)

1. zip warning: name not matched: oberdiek/hobsub*.sty This is for line 101 of mkctan.
2. The file oberdiek.pdf refers to hobsub (which is now gone) and https://github.com/ho-tex/oberdiek/ needs to be added.
3. Most of the documentation contains a section like this (for example):

   4.5 Some details for the interested
   Attached source. The PDF documentation on CTAN also includes the .dtx
   source file. It can be extracted by AcrobatReader 6 or higher. Another option is
   pdftk, e.g. unpack the file into the current directory:
   pdftk hypdoc.pdf unpack_files output .

   Which apparently is not correct, I have used pdfdetach -list hypdoc.pdf (and in others) and no file appears. Thanks again for everything.

[pablgonz]

@davidcarlisle Too fast....now if I think it's the last one :), I think <ho-tex at tug.org> shouldn't be in oberdiek.pdf

[davidcarlisle]

@pablgonz why not? That email address was set up specifically for this repository, not everyone has a github account. Thanks for the help, but I plan to stop now and ship this:-) (I do need to adjust the \thanks I just added so it doesn't mess up the bookmarks, then I'm done for this time.

[pablgonz]

@davidcarlisle Thank you very much for everything, I will close this, one thing before you upload everything to ctan, perhaps add

[2019/11/14]
- Update doc.

Until next time

[davidcarlisle]

@pablgonz I ought to update the dates and version numbers but for these global edits that is a bit of a pain and if I did ctan maintainers would have to update 90+ catalogue entries so I'm only dating the changes that affect the code (makerobust and holtxdoc this time round)

[pablgonz]

@davidcarlisle I understand, I mistakenly thought I was following the l3 package model :(.

[davidcarlisle]

@pablgonz if I do specific doc edits, eg when extracting a package to its own repository then I'll update the version number/date so most will get updated over time.

[pablgonz]

@davidcarlisle That would be great (and more comfortable for the people of ctan), hopefully some of the volunteers of this project will pass the configuration directly to l3build.

[pablgonz]

@davidcarlisle One more (I didn't see it before, sorry) https://github.com/ho-tex/grffile/blob/master/grffile.dtx

[davidcarlisle]

@pablgonz I have stressed ctan team enough this morning with oberdiek+hobsub+makerobust so I don't plan any release for a while, also grffile is not in this repo, this ticket is marked closed, can you open an issue on grffile and I'll get to it one day. Also any further issues in this repo can you open a new ticket, thanks.