On Tue, 8 Jul 2003, Lars Hellström wrote:

I have to ftp.dante.de uploaded an archive xdoc.tar.gz into /incoming. It contains a directory xdoc with the six files: README.txt docindex.dtx docindex.ins xdoc2.dtx xdoc2.ins xdocdemo.tex and I would like to have them put in /macros/latex/contrib/xdoc. The licence that applies is the LPPL.

This is an update of the material in /macros/latex/exptl/xdoc, so that directory and its contents can be removed. It should probably be replaced by a link to the new contrib/xdoc directory.

BTW, am I right if I assume that you are in a process of moving the previous contents of /macros/latex/contrib/other and /macros/latex/contrib/supported to simply /macros/latex/contrib? (It certainly looks that way in the archive.)

Yes, we are. We announced this on the ctan-ann mailing lsit a while ago.

Thanks for the upload, I installed the new material in

macros/latex/contrib/xdoc

and changed the directory

macros/latex/exptl/xdoc

to a link to the new one.

For the CTAN Team Rainer Schöpf

On what these files are:

xdoc2.dtx: The xdoc2 package contains reimplementations of some of the features found in the standard LaTeX doc package by Mittelbach et al. Amongst other things, these reimplementations provide support for:

• definiting new commands similar to DescribeMacro and new environments similar to the macro environment,
• two-sided document layouts,
• sorting of version numbers as 2 < 11 < 100 (if they are marked up using uintver),
• external cross-referencing,
• making index entries for invisible characters,
• optionally ignoring certain prefixes (such as @ and @@) in macro names when sorting them.

The xdocdemo document demonstrates a couple of these features.

I consider the xdoc2 package to merely be the second prototype for an (as yet nonexistant) package xdoc which should provide the same features (and more). I have decided to release the prototype to make its functionality generally avaiable, but under a variant name to avoid future incompatibility problems. (E.g., the final xdoc package will probably use many LaTeX2e* features that are still on the prototype stage. xdoc2, on the other hand, uses no LaTeX2e* features.)

docindex.dtx: docindex.dtx contains a reimplementation of the doc mechanisms for sorting and formatting a sorted index. docindex.ins installs two forms of this package: docindex (which is a LaTeX2e* package) and docidx2e (which works with the normal LaTeX2e). The main advantage of these packages over the doc mechanisms is that configuration has been made much easier.