CTAN : raw datas for user

Question

I would like to add in my long CV (not my short CV) the list of package I maintain in CTAN.

Is there somewhere a file where I could make a request, to:

• obtain the list of package I am associated
• have some information for each package : maintenance status, name, short description.

For example an XML file?

Answer 1

I have just published an experimental feature on the CTAN portal to retrieve information about the catalogue in XML form. This includes cross references for authors. For instance: http://www.ctan.org/xml/au­thor/knuth?ref=true

The online help provides some details.

Answer 2

^{Great, I should be sleeping by now, but no, I had to code something! :) Somebody please call the authorities.}

Here goes my pathetic attempt to provide the raw data you want. Since I had no idea of a good name (namely bird names, of course), I wrote a small application called ctaninfo. Here it comes:

paulo@alexandria ~$ java -jar ctaninfo.jar 

And then we have:

The author ID is the short name CTAN gives us, for example, cereda for me, gregorio for egreg and carlisle for David. You guys probably know what I'm talking about, right? :) Now let's try:

Then we click the OK button (don't mind the localization stuff, since my Linux is in Portuguese; you guys will probably get the window in your current locale). And wait. And wait a lot. Did I mention we have to wait? :)

^{Specially if you are David. Oh boy, he has a lot of packages! :)}

If things don't get messed up, we will probably reach this final screen

and we will have a file named <author ID>.xml lying somewhere in our computer, hopefully in the same directory the application is. :) In my example, we have rouquette.xml:

<ctan>
  <packages>
    <package>
      <title>bibleref-french – French translations for bibleref</title>
      <description>The package provides translations and alternative typesetting conventions for use of bibleref in French.</description>
      <sources>
        <string>/macros/latex/contrib/bibleref-french</string>
      </sources>
      <documentation>
        <string>Package Manual</string>
        <string>Package Manual</string>
      </documentation>
      <versions>
        <string>2.3.1</string>
      </versions>
      <licenses>
        <string>The LaTeX Project Public License 1.3</string>
      </licenses>
      <copyright>
        <string>2012 Maïeul Rouquette and Raphaël Pinson</string>
      </copyright>
      <maintainers>
        <string>Maïeul Rouquette</string>
        <string>Raphaël Pinson</string>
      </maintainers>
      <distributions>
        <string>TeXLive as bibleref-french</string>
        <string>MiKTeX as bibleref-french</string>
      </distributions>
      <topics>
        <string>typeset devotional texts and other material of interest to theologians</string>
      </topics>
    </package>

    ...

  </packages>
</ctan>

I created a GitHub repository for ctaninfo, and the binary can be found here, under the releases link. Phew. :)

Up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire!

Answer 3

there is a read-only copy of the catalogue source, omitting author details at rsync://rsync.tex.ac.uk for use with rsync. (the author details contain email addresses, so we decided simply to omit them. for the same reason, we can't simply publish our svn pointer -- that remains protected.)

the copy is updated daily.

(nb, i tried to use the facilities provided for urls in answers, but the formatting insisted on putting http: before the rsync: )