[RFC] hgweb: ease download of binary files

[Ted Pavlic]

> I'd like to share a LaTeX project that contains not only the
> source files, but the pdf files as well. atm, when you navigate
> to a pdf file, and if it recognized as binary (issue1079), you
> have to go back, and then download the linked file using your
> browser interface, if you want to inspect the pdf file.

FYI, I'm working on a LaTeX project now with several other authors who 
are not that computer savvy and are new to revision control entirely. In 
this project, they send their patches to me over e-mail, and I manage 
the central web repository myself. That gives us a little more security 
that merges are going go to over well.

In our project, we've added the PDFs to the hgignore so they're not 
managed by the revision control at all. Because the TeX (and the 
figures) are managed, there's no need to keep that extra bulk around. It 
saves a lot of space, and I think it's a more logical way to manage files.

However, periodically, an author might want to view the PDF on-line. In 
that case, I periodically build an updated document and put it on-line. 
I symlink it so that they can get to it from

http://server/hg/repo/document.pdf

It doesn't show up on the repo manifest, of course, but it's linked from 
our group wiki.

JUst some thoughts...
--Ted


-- 
Ted Pavlic <ted at tedpavlic.com>