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I've been working lately in a new style for my university, which is heavily influenced by a pre-existing style (feupteses). However, feupteses was never meant for PhD dissertations, so I decided to start working in a new version since it wasn't good enough.

...but, at the same time, mine is still not good enough either. It is pretty good, and works just fine, but it still has some minor details I'd like to correct. I'm practically working everyday with it, improving it whenever I need new things or to correct the ones I already had (almost already fully passed this stage).

So, my question is: Should I upload what I have up until now to CTAN? Should I wait a little longer to have it more polished? Should I never upload it and just pass it through my colleges as I see they need it (i.e., this shouldn't go to CTAN)? What should be the right way to treat something that is in need (as some of my friends have asked me for this style), but it is not as good as expected yet?

texenthusiast
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Mario S. E.
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1 Answers1

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It's great idea,really appreciate you. You have excellent Q & A on main site.

Some Thoughts:

  • Even you upload to CTAN or not, startup with Github or Bitbucket like code repositories for thesis style issue tracking and maintenance. Ignore if you already have it.

  • Before submitting to CTAN: Give your friends your-own.sty to get their opinion/testing remarks and verify the university thesis guidelines if any.

  • With those good remarks proceed with CTAN upload. You don't need to polish fully to make infinite loop. Ensure it is in working condition. You can always release a new version with feature requests/improvements.

  • Finally,please give detailed instructions guide to help students to find and use the thesis style.

Community
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texenthusiast
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    note that jim hefferon is no longer doing anything with ctan: the pressure of his “real work” overwhelmed him. in particular he’s no longer webmaster, and www.ctan.org is now “physically” in europe – wasteofspace Apr 05 '13 at 11:55
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    +1 for github suggestion. Bitbucket is similar, though it has terrible TOS imho (and uses Mercurial, which seems to be just a little bit weaker than git). – mbork Apr 05 '13 at 13:09
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    @mbork you can also use git on bitbucket – cgnieder Apr 05 '13 at 13:41
  • @cgnieder: thanks, I didn't know that (maybe it's relatively new). I'm wondering whether they did something with their TOS... – mbork Apr 05 '13 at 14:45
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    OT @mbork, but what is wrong with bitbucket's TOS? This is the first time I am hearing this. Some of the popular packages like Beamer are maintained on BB. – Aditya Apr 05 '13 at 21:56
  • @Aditya: first of all, they have common TOS for all their services, which is very user-unfriendly. That aside, paragraph 3.5 states (among others): "End User agrees to use Bitbucket solely as a code repository and not to upload any other content to Bitbucket (e.g., music or video)." Basically, this means that hosting open-source games on BB is violating their terms. (IANAL, but imho formally even documentation is excluded.) Github's TOS (1) are about 3 times shorter and (2) don't forbid you hosting non-code files. – mbork Apr 05 '13 at 22:28
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    And I guess it's the first time you're hearing this since almost nobody bothers to actually read the TOS... – mbork Apr 05 '13 at 22:29