Bug#330447: help is buggy-looking/useless without...help package
Rene Engelhard a écrit :
Hi,
please quote properly. Thanks.
Hi Rene,
I use Mozilla Thunderbird and replied directly to your mail. I chose
"Send as normal text only" when sending. I wish the MUA would offer to
see what choosing this will make the mail look like, but it doesn't, so
I always hope it's OK. However, I checked bugs.d.o and couldn't figure
out what you mean. I don't really like mail, but since I use Debian, I
guess I should still learn to use it properly ;) I'd appreciate if you
can explain me what's wrong in my previous mail, and perhaps how to fix
it if that's not obvious. Otherwise, I'll just continue to annoy you,
like with this mail :)
Filipus Klutiero wrote:
Well, it says you are missing the help, isn't it?
More or less. It says that...a "requested document does not exist in the
database". There are two ways to interpret this. First, OOo requested a
document that isn't there...because it's buggy, as the first idea. Or,
It isn't there because the help is not there. If there's no help
package installed there's no help. Simple as that.
There's no help document. So why does OOo request one? That's the idea.
I realize that the bug title I chose doesn't make great sense. I think
it's better to ignore the "/useless" part.
How can OOo make clear that the second possibility is the right one? By
saying that help is not available without an appropriate help package.
It is said. Go read the package description. "[..]. and help are not
included in this package. [...]"
BTW, I don't know how Debian packages are supposed to handle these
cases, where upstream design assumes a functionality is present but
Debian packaging makes that functionality optional. "Contact your system
administrator."? I don't know. The bug is certainly minor, but the fix
No. "Just install the package". That's why it's suggested. We can't
recommend it and depending on it would be bogus and also not allowed.
Right... "Just install the package", unless you're not the system
administrator, in which case you can't. I'm not asking to reconsider the
dependency level on the help packages, only to perhaps behave a bit
better given the current Suggests.
might not be straightforward.
Of course it is. Install the help.
I was talking about the easyness to fix for the developers, not the admins.
Me neither. I'd only like a clear explanation of what happens. And I'd
only "like", I don't expect it...I understand that getting minor bugs
You got it through the package description.
like that reported can be frustrating. If this is too time-consuming to
fix, finding the report might still be useful to a new admin thinking
it's a bug.
IMHO it is *no* bug. OOo just tells you what the issue is: The help isn't
there.
Well...
I'll leave it open anyway and reassign it to openoffice.org2, because OOo2
will just say "The help application could not be started" which *is* not
obvious[1]. But your problem on 1.1.x *is*.
OK. Since I guess that OOo2 is close enough, and you recognize that
something could be improved in it, arguing more about 1 must be useless.
When I said that "it would be nice to have some clear note that help
will be useless without a help package", the emphasis isn't on "help
will be useless", which is obvious, it's on "without a help package",
which admins may not realize.
See above. Admins should read what they install..
We just agreed that arguing about 1 was useless. Let me still put you in
another context a bit, if you want...you can skip the rest otherwise.
There are 2 French-speaking students studying at a university using
Sarge and OOo. Neither are admins of the PCs. The one that doesn't know
Debian starts OOo and realizes it's in English. Ah well, it will be
great if they can translate it to French. Meanwhile, the other student
that knows Debian realizes the same and mails the sysadmin to install
ooo-l10n-fr...just like I did last week. We can't do much about that
first issue.
Now the one that knows Debian tries accessing the help. He realizes the
package is missing and mails the sysadmin again to ask to install the a
help package. Meanwhile, the student that doesn't know Debian tries the
same. In the current state of OOo packaging, that student is likely to
conclude that OOo is buggy...and he may think that not having working
Help is a pretty big bug.
So who's wrong? Even I didn't read the description of all the packages
on my system. You can't expect a simple user to do that. The admins
simply forgot to install a package. Remember, that happened for the l10n
in my own university...I wouldn't be surprised if I got back to the lab
tomorrow and the help wasn't there. Ideally, both students would mail
the sysadmin, and he'd be annoyed enough to install the package more
quickly :)
Thanks again
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