[Python-modules-team] Bug#500747: Make a python-docutils-contrib package?

[Trent W. Buck]

Package: python-docutils
Version: 0.5-2
Severity: minor

The upstream source apparently contains a bunch of useful contributed
features in the "sandbox" subdirectory.  For example, the mailing list
recently had

>> What I don't know is how to make use of [the experimental manpage
>> writer]. I don't want to hack on the installed docutils software;
>> that's managed by [apt and dpkg] and it would be a mistake to mess
>> about manually with those files.
>
> There's [...]/sandbox/manpage-writer/rst2man.py.  You can just run
> it from that directory. It depends on the current directory being in
> the Python module load path, to find the "writers" package
> there.

It's not obvious to me how to translate that into instructions that
will work for docutils installed by "apt-get install python-docutils",
since it seems to assume I'm running docutils directly from an
upstream checkout.  It looks like the sandbox stuff in the
python-docutils .deb.

Perhaps it would be useful for these contrib scripts and modules to be
available directly to Debian users, so they (I) can just run
"rst2pdf", because it's in /usr/bin and the necessary contrib modules
are installed in the appropriate place.

Since these are experimental features, it's probably a bad idea for
them to be part of the main python-docutils .deb.  Therefore I suggest
creating a second .deb from this source package that provides these
contrib features in a "ready to use" fashion.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-1-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_AU.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_AU.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages python-docutils depends on:
ii  python                        2.5.2-2    An interactive high-level object-o
ii  python-central                0.6.8      register and build utility for Pyt
ii  python-roman                  0.5-2      A module for generating/analyzing 

python-docutils recommends no packages.

Versions of packages python-docutils suggests:
pn  texlive-lang-french        <none>        (no description available)
ii  texlive-latex-base         2007.dfsg.1-3 TeX Live: Basic LaTeX packages
ii  texlive-latex-recommended  2007.dfsg.1-3 TeX Live: LaTeX recommended packag

-- no debconf information