> > I'm readily capable of giving opinions on many packages I've used, but > > I'm not about to give away my (often private) documents that > > constitute the only tests I've made of them. > > OK, so when you send a bug report to an author, you just say "I found > that your package xyz does not work"? Not very useful. Good point. However, a bug report (certain rather limited circumstances excepted) doesn't get published for all to see. As a package author, I wouldn't want the entire repertoire of `recommendation' for my packages to be the contents of the bug reports ;-) > If you call your "document that uses it" a test file, after having > stripped off indications about your religious beliefs, personal > address, name of your pets, and other facts that make it an (often > private) document, that would be perfect for me. An opinion would go > to /dev/null as I have no way to check it and make an opinion myself. We have to agree to differ here. I regularly accept people's opinions of things as the first step in my path to deciding what to do myself. Oh, and by the way, I actually _publish_ the name of my pet. On the Web... > > I really do not believe that an exercise to produce test suites/demo > > programs for packages is effort well spent. > > If you care only about experts, such as Robin Fairbairns or > Sebastian Rahtz, I agree it is certainly useless. I don't think I implied it was useless. I merely implied that an attempt to acquire, verify, and publish a comprehensive set was doomed. I believe attempting to acquire a set of informed opinions of the available packages is a demanding enough task... > But if you care also about newcomers to TeX and average users, > I really do believe that an exercise to produce test suites/demo > programs for packages is effort well spent. I have included several > demo files in AsTeX distribution, and it seems to be very much > appreciated by users. If you carefully limit the task you're undertaking, you can always achieve what you're after. I don't have the AsTeX distribution (though I do have the manual you kindly sent me), but I would assume you "included what you could do". > And look at Microsoft programming languages, I would far rather not... > such as Visual C++ or Visual Basic: each instruction and procedure > (which are the equivalent of macros and packages) comes with several > examples that you can cut and paste into your document. If users did > not like that, do you think Microsoft would have spent a cent to do > such work? I don't think we're looking at an issue of what we get for our money's worth, since we don't have any money, to speak of. Money means different things to different people: if you're running a commercial mega-empire, money is the means to attract more money, but if you're running a tiny non-profit organisation you get to have a personal feel about every penny/centime of it. I don't have a lot of experience of the mega-empire world, but I know I feel very differently about UK TUG's money than I used to about the money of the small firm which If we can get a useful set of demo programs together, all well and good, but I would be surprised if we did. I'll settle for a coordinated set of opinions. I think I've argued long enough about this one (probably too long): all I want is a little pragmatism about what is achievable. I shall shut up now. Robin F