texlive-latex-extra-doc is too big in size and includes unneeded big minitoc-fr.pdf file (~27Mb)

[Mantas Kriaučiūnas]

texlive-latex-extra-doc is too big in size (187 megabytes) and includes unneeded big minitoc-fr.pdf files (~27Mb size) in /usr/share/doc/texlive-latex-extra-doc/latex/minitoc/ folder:
ubuntu@ubuntu:/$ ls -lh usr/share/doc/texlive-latex-extra-doc/latex/minitoc/mini*pdf
27M 2009-05-31 00:46 usr/share/doc/texlive-latex-extra-doc/latex/minitoc/minitoc-fr.pdf
27M 2009-05-31 00:46 usr/share/doc/texlive-latex-extra-doc/latex/minitoc/minitoc.pdf

I don't know why these minitoc*.pdf files are so big, maybe because of included images in PDF files?
It would be nice to decrease size of minitoc*.pdf files, maybe converting to Dejavu or HTML format would help?
If there are no way to decrease size of minitoc*.pdf files at least twice then please remove minitoc-fr.pdf file

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Nils Ole Tippenhauer (noleti)]

I agree completely. I certainly never needed any content from this package, and yet it seems to be pulled in by other texlive-latex-extra stuff.

The minitoc pdf is just excessive. It is a 800 pages pdf file with commented code, and flags and maps of many countries. I don't want to think about the bandwidth with is spent by Ubuntu users worldwide downloading this pdf twice for each update of the texlive-latex-extra-doc. How about providing a small PDF with usage instructions, and a link to the homepage of the author?

I appreciate all the work of the main author Jean-Pierre F. Drucbert (who passed away in 2009), but maybe this package needs to be improved.

[Norbert Preining (preining)]

On Do, 24 Okt 2013, Nils Ole Tippenhauer wrote:
> I agree completely. I certainly never needed any content from this
> package, and yet it seems to be pulled in by other texlive-latex-extra
> stuff.

Wrong. It is only a *recommend*, that means you *can* deselect it
if you want.

End of discussion.

Norbert

------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREINING, Norbert http://www.preining.info
JAIST, Japan TeX Live & Debian Developer
DSA: 0x09C5B094 fp: 14DF 2E6C 0307 BE6D AD76 A9C0 D2BF 4AA3 09C5 B094
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[Nils Ole Tippenhauer (noleti)]

Hi Norbert,
I assume you are the package maintainer, thank you for your contributions to debian. Also thank you for pointing out that the package can be deselected, it turns out this question was actually raised for this specific package a couple of times before, e.g. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1963939 and http://askubuntu.com/questions/84854/are-textlive-xxx-doc-packages-required-for-installing-lyx .

I believe the question is not whether the package is recommended or required, but rather if the package needs to have the same big PDF file twice, in english and in french. I just mentioned that I got the package without need to underline that this could be the case with many other users as well.

So if I understood your reply correctly, you are convinced that:

a) minitoc-fr.pdf (27 MB) belongs into the package for users speaking arbitrary languages
and
b) minitoc.pdf must have many figures of flags and maps of countries?

[Norbert Preining (preining)]

Hi

> a) minitoc-fr.pdf (27 MB) belongs into the package for users speaking arbitrary languages
> and
> b) minitoc.pdf must have many figures of flags and maps of countries

I care neither for one or the other, but I simply follow upstream TeX Live which in turn follows up-upstream minitoc authors.

That's it.

Tou can try to convince the minitoc authors to:
* reduce the size of the pdf
* split the french manual into a separate package
* remove everything
all to your liking! After that the same will happen in TL and then in Debian and after that in Ubuntu, like the river flows from the source downward.

Norbert

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PREINING, Norbert http://www.preining.info
JAIST, Japan TeX Live & Debian Developer
DSA: 0x09C5B094 fp: 14DF 2E6C 0307 BE6D AD76 A9C0 D2BF 4AA3 09C5 B094
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[Mark Edgington (edgimar)]

I would argue that the texlive-latex-extra-doc package should be only a *suggested* package when installing texlive-latex-extra. Because the default policy is to install packages that are marked as *recommended*, it means that a (currently) 317 MB package will be downloaded any time one wants to install texlive-latex-extra, unless you explicitly specify you don't want recommended packages.

But requiring the use of the --no-install-recommends flag with apt-get is problematic because it also prevents any other recommended software from being installed. It is better to allow the user to "opt-in" to the large download, than require the user to have to "opt-out" of it.

[Nils Ole Tippenhauer (noleti)]

Hi Norbert,
Sorry for the long delay, just found your reply today. The CTAN minitoc maintainer is still listed as Jean-Pierre Drucbert. Jean-Pierre Drucbert unfortunately passed away in March 2009. I have now sent a mail to the tex live mailing list to ask them about a change.

[molecule-eye (niburu1)]

In this particular case, I don't see any reason that debian should follow upstream TeX Live. I mean sure, this is more often than not good policy, but these documentation packages should really just be suggested packages.

[Nils Ole Tippenhauer (noleti)]

While I still think that the general package is unnecessarily large, I also understand Norbert's position. I did a revision of minitoc in 2014, which greatly reduced the file size of the pdf document (to less than 1MB). The version is on CTAN now and should eventually end downstream (via TL/Debian).

I will close this bug as fixed (by me).

If people want to advocate for change of texlive-latex-extra to *suggested*, please open a separate bugreport and potentially link it here. That bugreport would probably have to be in Debian?

[Nils Ole Tippenhauer (noleti)]

It seems that I don't have sufficient rights to close the bug, please do so if you have those rights

[Neal McBurnett (nealmcb)]

In the meanttime, this will just remove all the tex documentation:

    sudo apt-get --purge remove tex.\*-doc$