Re: FWD: dh_compress

[Laurent Martelli <martelli@iie.cnam.fr>]

>>>>> "Joey" == Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org> writes:

  Joey> Laurent Martelli wrote:
  >> Shouldn't all programs that can display doc files handle
  >> compressed files natively ? Having to manually uncompress the
  >> file or use a special command that handles compressed files is
  >> unconvenient, especially for beginners who might even not be able
  >> to read those files.

  Joey> I don't see how your question is is germane to the topic I was
  Joey> trying to raise. Policy already says:

  Joey>    Any additional documentation that comes with the package
  Joey> can be installed at the discretion of the package
  Joey> maintainer. Text documentation should be installed in a
  Joey> directory /usr/share/doc/<package>', where <package> is the
  Joey> name of the package, and compressed with gzip -9' unless it is
  Joey> small.

  Joey> I just want to know the definition of "small".

I was a bit off topic, I agree.

I was just pointing that compressing files in order to save space is
good, but it can be unconvenient sometimes. And sometimes, when you
have a lot of space available, you'd rather choose not to have the
files compressed because you can afford the cost, compared to the
convenience of not having to decompress. 

So, in the end, why should this policy be hard-coded ? In an ideal
world, we'd probably let the user chose if he prefers compression or
not, depending on the space he has, the CPU power he has
(uncompressing is CPU intensive), his ability to read uncompressed
files ... 

I agree that it's good to have default policies, but I think it's bad
when you can't change it easily. 

-- 
Laurent Martelli
martelli@iie.cnam.fr