Re: intent to package x2x

[Joey Hess <joey@kitenet.net>]

Charles Briscoe-Smith wrote:
> The reason "x2x" and "propsel" suggest each other is because if you select
> one, you should know about the other too; they do similar things, and you
> may have unwittingly picked the wrong one.  Each package's description
> also mentions the other and tries to help you decide which one to use.

I think this is a _very_ bad reason for a suggestion. It's using Suggests
for almost the opposite of what it was designed for.

     `Suggests'
          This is used to declare that one package may be more useful with
          one or more others. Using this field tells the packaging system
          and the user that the listed packages are be related to this one
          and can perhaps enhance its usefulness, but that installing this
          one without them is perfectly reasonable.

          dselect will offer suggsted packages to the system administrator
          when they select the suggesting package, but the default is not
          to install the suggested package. 

You are using suggests to tell the user that they _don't_ want to install
the other package. That's silly. If someone reads the description for
propsel, realized they want x2x, they can use standard dseleect navigation
to get to x2x. Lose the confusing Suggests, keep the nice descriptions that
explain the difference.

BTW, this text from the propsel description is wrong:

 However, x2x can only link two displays
 at once, whereas propsel can propagate selections between up to
 8 displays.

I've used x2x to link 3 displays. Just run it twice on the middle display,
one copy points to the display to the left, the other to the display to the
right. It works fine. I don't think it'll scale to more than 3 though (until
the -north and -south options get implemented, then it'll do 5).

-- 
see shy jo


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