creating `units' package

[Carey Evans <c.evans@clear.net.nz>]

I've debianized the GNU `units' program by Adrian Mariano for my own
use, and I want to contribute it to the Debian distribution as an easy
introduction before looking at taking over any orphaned packages or
creating more ambitious packages..  It also seems to be a bit of an
ommission in Debian when units is a standard part of many real Unixes,
and Solaris.

Putting the package together has raised a few questions:

 - First of all, has anyone put units into Debian since the 1.2.5
   distribution's Packages file that I'm using as a reference?  I
   haven't seen it, but just in case I missed it...

 - The GPL in /usr/doc/copyright/GPL.gz, and in COPYING with the
   program, says:

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
    Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

   but the program's source code says:

 *  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 *  along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
 *  Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA

   Which of these is correct?

 - I don't really know which section and priority units should go in.
   I guess it's doing maths so it could go there.  Because it's quite
   small and is a standard part of some Unixes, I would like to put it
   in standard.  Your comments would be appreciated.

For those of you who don't know what units is, here's the blurb:

:    The `units' program converts quantities expressed in various scales
: to their equivalents in other scales.  The `units' program can only
: handle multiplicative scale changes.  For example, it cannot convert
: Celsius to Fahrenheit but it can convert temperature differences
: between those temperature scales.
: 
:    The units are defined in an external data file.  You can use the
: extensive data file that comes with this program, or you can provide
: your own data file to suit your needs.
: 
:    You can use the program interactively with prompts, or you can use it
: from the command line.

-- 
                Carey Evans  <*>  c.evans@clear.net.nz

"Encryption renamed to Encode to avoid US regulation problems"
                     - include/linux/wireless.h in Linux 2.0.30 kernel


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