Re: Alternatives entries for postscript/pdf-viewer

["Marcelo E. Magallon" <mmagallo@debian.org>]

 > as the sponsor for a package which wants a(ny) postscript viewer, I
 > noticed that there are virtual packages for postscript-viewer and
 > pdf-viewer, but no alternatives, i.e. there's no
 > "/usr/bin/postscript-viewer".

 $ man run-mailcap
 $ dpkg -s $(dpkg -S $(which run-mailcap) | cut -d : -f 1) | grep ^Priority
 Priority: standard

     `standard'
          These packages provide a reasonably small but not too limited
          character-mode system.  This is what will be installed by default
          if the user doesn't select anything else.  It doesn't include
          many large applications.

 Depend on postscript-viewer and mime-support.

 > That is unfortunate, as there doesn't seem to be a good way to find
 > out which viewer programs are actually installed

 Actually the method that _is_ available is rather good, and per-user
 configurable, unlike alternatives.

 > Unless there's protest, I therefore will mass-file a minor bug
 > against all packages which Provide: postscript-viewer or pdf-viewer
 > so that they add appropriate update-alternatives calls to their
 > scripts (Policy 3.10).

 I object.

-- 
Marcelo