Hi,This is specifically a response to the konq-plugins bug. However, I'm CCing it to the similar kdebase bug that appeared recently since I expect the general issues involved are the same.
Anyway, regarding konq-plugins:
konq-plugins recommends imagemagick, presumably for the image gallerycreation plugin. It must be a good idea that imagemagick is suggested, but it shouldn't be recommended since image gallery creation is not the only plugin.
The counterargument is: Suppose a user installs konq-plugins, expecting that the plugins will "just work". If a user tries to use a plugin that needs some missing program:
1. In the worst case the plugin will fail or crash with a mysterious error message that means little to the user.
2. In an ideal world, the plugin will pop up a pretty dialog that says "sorry, you need to install the foobar package". This probably won't happen unless somebody goes through and patches the KDE sources to describe debian package requirements.
3. In probably the best case that we can realistically hope for, the plugin will pop up a dialog that says "I cannot find /usr/bin/ dofoobar", at which point the user rummages about to find which debian package provides /usr/bin/dofoobar and then installs it themselves.
I'd argue that for users who don't know what they're doing, we should avoid (1) at all costs. At the other end of the spectrum, I'd say that (2) is perfectly acceptable but will probably not happen in reality since it requires constant maintenance of debian-specific patches.
On the other hand, I'd say that (3) is fine for experienced users who know what they're doing. This is more or less what recommends are for.
So I'd argue that recommending imagemagick is indeed the correct solution (I was even more conservative when I maintained konq-plugins -- IIRC I had it as a depends). In particular, my vote (for what it's worth) is that imagemagick should not be weakened to a suggests.
Ben.