Re: ITP: surf

[Alexander Shumakovitch <shurik@math.unibas.ch>]

On Fri, Oct 29, 1999 at 03:31:29PM +0200, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
> surf is the program that is used by SuSE to make the cool cover graphics.
And by a bunch of mathematicians all over the globe to make research in the
algebraic geometry. ;-)

> It is incredible useful to draw algebraic varieties (the points atr which
> the function is zero). It is GPL. I still have to figure out the URL etc,
> but it is in SuSE and alien works (modulo library soname dependencies ;)
As I used to use surf for my work (not only to see those nice pictures ;-) ),
I was thinking about packaging it for Debian (as my "entrance package"). But
there are some problems with it which stopped me. It uses two ancient programs
fbm2fli and bm2font to create a movie and to transform a picture into a TeX
font, respectively.  Those programs are free, but were last modified in 1993
or something. For example, I never managed to compile bm2font on Linux with
glibc2.0 at all (no problems on Solaris though). The one who takes care about
surf should probably also bring those programs to Debian, with all the
possible consequences ;-) So I never wanted to be that person.

Also, there were troubles with compiling surf using EGCS (or GCC 2.95 for that
matter) C++. If you need a patch (for surf, not EGCS) I'd happily provide you
with it.

It's great that someone is finally packaging Surf! Good luck!

   --- Alexander.