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New ispell packages - proposals



Dear All,

Since I've (foolishly) taken over custody of the ispell packages, I have 
been thinking about how to package them up for differing languages.

So far I have the following situation...

ispell-n.n-n.deb installs the ispell binaries, man pages and info page.  
This version of ispell is compiled to default to the 
/usr/lib/ispell/default.{hash,aff} dictionary files (not included in the 
ispell package).

The i<language>-n.n-n.deb supply the various dictionaries. For example, I 
would install ibritish-1.0-1.deb for myself, and iportuguese-1.0-1.deb 
for my girlfriend.  These install /usr/lib/ispell/<language>.{hash,aff} 
files, and their postinst scripts set up sym links from the user's chosen 
default to /etc/ispell/dictionary.{hash,aff}, which in turn are pointed 
to from /usr/lib/ispell/default.{hash,aff}.

Each dictionary package provides an Ispell_Dictionary virtual package.  
Now then, the problem is that of circular dependencies again.  Ideally, 
ispell should depend on an Ispell_Dictionary, but then the dictionaries 
should depend on ispell.  Chicken or egg situation...  It is my 
understanding that we don't have a mechanism for handling these mutually 
dependent packages, or do we?

Does anyone have any ideas?  Or should I go back to supplying at least 
one dictionary within the ispell package and have the others in 
additional packages dependent on ispell?

I've also allocated the virtual package "Spelling_Checker" for ispell, 
and a "Document Preparation" section to the Info dir file.  The 
Linuxdoc-SGML and all the ispell packages will place info files in there. 
Any objections?

Debian never ceases to delight me...

Kenny.


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