This is not correct.
picins.sty is required for producing the full pdf documentation "make pdffigures".
While it is true that picins is not included in the default texlive distribution, it is still easily available and I have been able to find no adequate replacement for it. If you know of a possible successor package, please let me know! Particularly if it plays nicely with htlatex so that we can easliy include the figures in the HTML documentation as well.
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I have used the wrapfig package for these things so far. A minor change in doc2tex.c make it work, but it seems to have some problem with the commands in the verbatim environment.
For multi target documentation I am using txt2tags, also because one can easily tweak the html documents using css.
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The main problem with picins is that no distro is allowed to include it because of its license. So "easily available" doesn't help us (Gentoo Linux), since we cannot add picins as a dependency that is required to build gnuplot.
Maybe an option to use normal LaTeX floats instead (i.e. without wrapping the text around) could be added?
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> we cannot add picins as a dependency that is required to build gnuplot
But picins is _not_ required to build or run gnuplot. It is needed only to regenerate the optional documentation target "make pdffigures". A default build does not generate even the non-picins, non-illustrated, documentation target "make pdf". Since we provide the *.pdf file anyhow, I view this whole mechanism as more of a developer option than a user option.
I suppose we could further modify the Makefile and the file titlepag.tex so that the invocation \usepackage{picins} is only triggered by the "make pdffigures" target, and not by the "make pdf" target (which doesn't use it).
Would that help at all?
[another thought]
I don't know what Gentoo's policies are about what is or isn't a dependency, but I think it's rather excessive to label TeX/LaTeX as a gnuplot dependency. It isn't needed to build or run gnuplot, and gnuplot is perfectly capable of generating LaTeX output files even on systems that do not have LaTeX installed. And if you don't list LaTeX as a dependency, then the issue of the picins package becomes moot, I guess?
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> I suppose we could further modify the Makefile and the file
> titlepag.tex so that the invocation \usepackage{picins} is only
> triggered by the "make pdffigures" target, and not by the "make pdf"
> target (which doesn't use it).
>
> Would that help at all?
Yes, it would. Then we wouldn't need to patch titlepag.tex at the distro level.
> I don't know what Gentoo's policies are about what is or isn't a
> dependency, but I think it's rather excessive to label TeX/LaTeX as
> a gnuplot dependency.
Since Gentoo packages are built from source on the user's system, LaTeX _is_ necessary as a build-time dependency. (However, the user can select via USE flags [1] that the package is built without documentation, in which case LaTeX isn't required.)
> Yes, it would. Then we wouldn't need to patch titlepag.tex at the distro level.
OK. Please try the attached patch. Works here on initial testing, but obviously that was not extensive.
I'm afraid I still don't understand Gentoo's dependency policy, however. The Makefile in .../docs provides mechanisms for converting the documentation to many different formats, including nroff, rtf, and texinfo as well as pdf. But these are not the default. That is, they are not selected by "make all". In what sense do they introduce a dependency? Do you list emacs as a dependency, just so that one could regenerate the *.texi file? Is libggi a dependency just because there is a archaic configuration options that would let you build a ggi driver? Would latex cease being a dependency if we placed gnuplot.pdf in the main source tarball rather than providing it as a separate file?
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> Please try the attached patch. Works here on initial testing, but
> obviously that was not extensive.
I'll try it in the next days (probably tomorrow).
> I'm afraid I still don't understand Gentoo's dependency policy,
> however.
The main guideline is to give our users control how packages are
configured and what parts of them are being installed. This is
possible because we build from source instead of distributing
binaries.
To stay with the libggi example: By default libggi isn't a dependency
of gnuplot. However, the user has the possibility to switch on the
"ggi" USE flag, in which case libggi will be pulled in as dependency,
and gnuplot's configure will be called with the --with-ggi option.
Concerning documentation, we currently only build the GNU info and the
PDF files. (We probably would build also other formats if there was
user request. So far there hasn't been any.)
> Would latex cease being a dependency if we placed gnuplot.pdf in the
> main source tarball rather than providing it as a separate file?
I think it's better to keep it separate, because it would considerably
increase the size of the tarball. Also it would be no problem for us
to use the separate PDF file, in case we wanted to get rid of the
LaTeX dependency. (We would prefer if the PDF files for manual and
tutorial were versioned, e.g. gnuplot-4.2.6.pdf, but that's only a
minor issue.)
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
patch which removes picins from docu
This is not correct.
picins.sty is required for producing the full pdf documentation "make pdffigures".
While it is true that picins is not included in the default texlive distribution, it is still easily available and I have been able to find no adequate replacement for it. If you know of a possible successor package, please let me know! Particularly if it plays nicely with htlatex so that we can easliy include the figures in the HTML documentation as well.
you are right,pdffigures fails.
I have used the wrapfig package for these things so far. A minor change in doc2tex.c make it work, but it seems to have some problem with the commands in the verbatim environment.
For multi target documentation I am using txt2tags, also because one can easily tweak the html documents using css.
The main problem with picins is that no distro is allowed to include it because of its license. So "easily available" doesn't help us (Gentoo Linux), since we cannot add picins as a dependency that is required to build gnuplot.
Maybe an option to use normal LaTeX floats instead (i.e. without wrapping the text around) could be added?
> we cannot add picins as a dependency that is required to build gnuplot
But picins is _not_ required to build or run gnuplot. It is needed only to regenerate the optional documentation target "make pdffigures". A default build does not generate even the non-picins, non-illustrated, documentation target "make pdf". Since we provide the *.pdf file anyhow, I view this whole mechanism as more of a developer option than a user option.
I suppose we could further modify the Makefile and the file titlepag.tex so that the invocation \usepackage{picins} is only triggered by the "make pdffigures" target, and not by the "make pdf" target (which doesn't use it).
Would that help at all?
[another thought]
I don't know what Gentoo's policies are about what is or isn't a dependency, but I think it's rather excessive to label TeX/LaTeX as a gnuplot dependency. It isn't needed to build or run gnuplot, and gnuplot is perfectly capable of generating LaTeX output files even on systems that do not have LaTeX installed. And if you don't list LaTeX as a dependency, then the issue of the picins package becomes moot, I guess?
> I suppose we could further modify the Makefile and the file
> titlepag.tex so that the invocation \usepackage{picins} is only
> triggered by the "make pdffigures" target, and not by the "make pdf"
> target (which doesn't use it).
>
> Would that help at all?
Yes, it would. Then we wouldn't need to patch titlepag.tex at the distro level.
> I don't know what Gentoo's policies are about what is or isn't a
> dependency, but I think it's rather excessive to label TeX/LaTeX as
> a gnuplot dependency.
Since Gentoo packages are built from source on the user's system, LaTeX _is_ necessary as a build-time dependency. (However, the user can select via USE flags [1] that the package is built without documentation, in which case LaTeX isn't required.)
[1] <http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=2&chap=2>
> Yes, it would. Then we wouldn't need to patch titlepag.tex at the distro level.
OK. Please try the attached patch. Works here on initial testing, but obviously that was not extensive.
I'm afraid I still don't understand Gentoo's dependency policy, however. The Makefile in .../docs provides mechanisms for converting the documentation to many different formats, including nroff, rtf, and texinfo as well as pdf. But these are not the default. That is, they are not selected by "make all". In what sense do they introduce a dependency? Do you list emacs as a dependency, just so that one could regenerate the *.texi file? Is libggi a dependency just because there is a archaic configuration options that would let you build a ggi driver? Would latex cease being a dependency if we placed gnuplot.pdf in the main source tarball rather than providing it as a separate file?
Separate the inclusion of graphicx and picins from titlepag.tex per se
Same patch but it's against 4.4.0 rather than 4.5
> Please try the attached patch. Works here on initial testing, but
> obviously that was not extensive.
I'll try it in the next days (probably tomorrow).
> I'm afraid I still don't understand Gentoo's dependency policy,
> however.
The main guideline is to give our users control how packages are
configured and what parts of them are being installed. This is
possible because we build from source instead of distributing
binaries.
To stay with the libggi example: By default libggi isn't a dependency
of gnuplot. However, the user has the possibility to switch on the
"ggi" USE flag, in which case libggi will be pulled in as dependency,
and gnuplot's configure will be called with the --with-ggi option.
Concerning documentation, we currently only build the GNU info and the
PDF files. (We probably would build also other formats if there was
user request. So far there hasn't been any.)
> Would latex cease being a dependency if we placed gnuplot.pdf in the
> main source tarball rather than providing it as a separate file?
I think it's better to keep it separate, because it would considerably
increase the size of the tarball. Also it would be no problem for us
to use the separate PDF file, in case we wanted to get rid of the
LaTeX dependency. (We would prefer if the PDF files for manual and
tutorial were versioned, e.g. gnuplot-4.2.6.pdf, but that's only a
minor issue.)
Both pdffigures.patch (tested with CVS trunk) and pdffigures_44.patch (tested with 4.4.0_rc1) work fine for me.