Re: Debian packages and freedesktop.org (Gnome, KDE, etc) menu entries

[Bruce Sass <bsass@edmc.net>]

On Wed, 10 Dec 2003, Henning Makholm wrote:
> Have you quantified the "bloat" you are speaking about? Can the same
> argument not apply to any i18n effort?

Yes, using KDE2.  The script removed any lines with "["<stuff>"]" in
them from KDE files (was possible at the time without incurring
breakage) and would typically result in about 5M of disk usage being
reduced to a couple hundred K.  KDE was also faster processing and
accessing its menues, although I did not quantify that aspect (not as
easy to do and the difference was obvious enough that I didn't feel
the need to hack KDE to put a number to it).

Yes, the same argument applies to all i18n efforts.

I18n is great, until disk usage and processing times start to climb
with no real benefit to individual users.


> > Yes, but they would benefit in the same way if the KDE and Gnome
> > specific bits were an addendum to the main menu data entries.
>
> At the cost of a more complicated system, which would by nobody anything.

I would hardly call avoiding forcing everyone except KDE and Gnome the
need to deal with menu data files which are 10x to 20x the size they
need to be `not buying nobody anything'.


> > > Just how much more time and resources would it take to convert
> > > .desktop files to Debian menu definitions? How often does it have to
> > > be done?
>
> > 1 or 2 hundred bytes vs. a couple to few thousand bytes _per_entry_;
>
> I think we can spare that much memory while generating the menus.

memory, disk space, and processing time

Maybe you can spare it, I can't, and I suspect those trying to run a
light weight system either can't or don't want to.


> > I would like to see:
> > /usr/lib/menu/desktop
> > /usr/lib/menu/desktop/gnome
> > /usr/lib/menu/desktop/kde
>
> But for some reason you're wildly opposed to the idea that .debs can
> contain files that populate these directories. Why?

Huh, I think you need to do some re-reading.


- Bruce