Subject: bug#44578: Investigating current preview problem

From: David Kastrup <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2022 15:05:43 +0100

Tassilo Horn <[email-masked]> writes:

> Hugo Raguet <[email-masked]> writes:
>
>>> That is what we are doing. Currently just held back by administrative
>>> issues, because my employer is supposed to pay the bill, but I am not
>>> sure under which tax regime this will be acceptable for its
>>> accounting.
>>
>> Unfortunately, we could not find an agreement. If I understand well,
>> David Kastrup you are willing to do the job if paid by individuals,
>> but you refuse to edit a proper bill to be paid by organizations.
>
> AFAIK, editing a proper bill addressing all tax related things that your
> organization needs is a non-trivial task and possibly more
> time-consuming than the fix itself.

It's more like the possible followup may become a mess if the tax
related things are not done properly, and there are different tax
regimes involved.

Given that the original motivation to do something here was really
lacking, this just did not fit a "recompense for actual effort"
calculation any more and it didn't help that this was intended to become
a posterchild of the "work on free software can be paid work" kind in
light of what I previously invested in the project.

It was a well-meant pitch but in the end did not manage to make it to my
home plate.

Additionally it would appear that the LaTeX team made this a really
muddy and unreliable feat by trying to introduce new hooks and hide
functionality (in more than one iteration) that just don't match the use
case of preview.sty, and that I fail to reproduce the problem on my own
computer in the first place.  So there really is no clear finishing line
to when this can be considered fixed in good conscience.

> So it's certainly not individuals vs. organization.
>
> Fortunately for you guys, a small group of individuals has been found
> who will pay to get your bug fixed.
>
>> Bug still pending...

He did say that the main thing I had to fear was getting blamed on the
mailing list for not doing what I had been paid for.  It would appear
that this does not really depend all that much on payment.

> Have you tried GNU AUCTeX 13.0.15 from
>
>   https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/auctex.html
>
> with the preview.sty version shipping with that, yet?

Given that I am unable to reproduce the problem on my system (I have no
proper idea why), that would be a welcome data point.

-- 
David Kastrup