Bug#108006: tetex-bin: texdoc should use mailcap to find viewing programs

[gus@debian.org]

Package: tetex-bin
Version: 1.0.7+20001218-5
Severity: wishlist

currently texdoc uses these programs as defaults:

: ${TEXDOCVIEW_dvi='( xdvi %s ) &'}
: ${TEXDOCVIEW_pdf='( acroread %s ) &'}
: ${TEXDOCVIEW_ps='( ghostview %s ) &'}
: ${TEXDOCVIEW_html='( netscape %s ) &'}
: ${TEXDOCVIEW_txt="${PAGER-more} %s"}

it should not be hard to change it to use commands from mailcap by
running see(1) from mime-support.deb

eg: TEXDOCVIEW_ps='see %s >/dev/null &'

the ">/dev/null" causes see to not have a terminal available, and thus
will spawn its own xterm to run needsterminal mailcap entries -- this
will keep existing backgrounding behaviour. (personally i'd prefer
having simply "see %s" for all of them, and having to background it
myself)

suggesting mime-support would be better than having to suggest acroread,
netscape and ghostview too ;)


since see(1) handles common encodings itself too, it would be possible
to remove that code from texdoc(1).  this is a larger change tho.

-- System Information
Debian Release: testing/unstable
Kernel Version: Linux roach 2.4.7 #2 Wed Jul 25 11:26:19 EST 2001 i686 unknown

Versions of the packages tetex-bin depends on:
ii  debianutils    1.15           Miscellaneous utilities specific to Debian.
ii  dpkg           1.9.16         Package maintenance system for Debian
ii  ed             0.2-19         The classic unix line editor
ii  libc6          2.2.3-9        GNU C Library: Shared libraries and Timezone
ii  libkpathsea3   1.0.7+20001218 shared libkpathsea for teTeX
ii  libpng2        1.0.12-2       PNG library - runtime
ii  libstdc++2.10- 2.95.4-0.01072 The GNU stdc++ library
ii  libtiff3g      3.5.5-5        Tag Image File Format library
ii  libwww0        5.3.2-5        The W3C-WWW library.
ii  libxaw7        4.1.0-2        X Athena widget set library
ii  perl-base      5.6.1-5        The Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister.
ii  tetex-base     1.0.2+20000804 basic teTeX library files
ii  xlibs          4.1.0-2        X Window System client libraries
ii  zlib1g         1.1.3-15       compression library - runtime
libwww-ssl0	Not installed or no info

--- Ignoring modified conffile /etc/texmf/texmf.cnf (>8k)