Re: Bug#618314 closed by Debian FTP Masters <ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org> (Bug#659309: Removed package(s) from unstable)
Dear Release Team, dear FTP Masters,
On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 07:57:35PM +0200, Toni Mueller wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 04:42:13PM +0000, Debian Bug Tracking System wrote:
> > which was filed against the scim-tables-zh package:
> >
> > #618314: scim-tables-zh: description of WuBi is a little unclear
> >
> > It has been closed by Debian FTP Masters <ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org>.
>
> > Their explanation is attached below along with your original report.
> > If this explanation is unsatisfactory and you have not received a
> > better one in a separate message then please contact Debian FTP Masters <ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org> by
> > replying to this email.
>
> I'll try to investigate the details of the package ASAP (today, if possible),
> but in case I can verify that the whole support for middle-east and Indian
> languages is also in scim-tables, removing it was probably a gross mistake, and
> kindly ask that the packages may possibly be re-instated.
in roughly the last few weeks, I have seen a number of removal bugs
filed against various packages out of the group of packages surrounding
the 'scim' input method package. I claim that the statements made in
those removal bugs are in part simply false statements, and primarily
designed to remove the only reasonable competition from ibus, which so
far still sees only half the adoption of scim, according to popcon.
Please see below.
As a recent discussion on -devel has indicated, there are significant
uses for scim that are not covered by ibus, thus imho invalidating the
claim that scim is not useful anymore, anyway. Not everything works for
everyone, and users should have the choice and find something that
works.
Before deciding to commit to scim, I tried ibus, too, falling for their
advertising, but even with very little usage (1 day or so) found a bug
that was important to me, although maybe not to many, plus a number of
things that may simply be me. Today, one of the ibus folks told me to
report the bug upstream instead of in the BTS, giving an unconvincing
reason (which I've countered in the BTS already).
Incidentically, those removal bugs have been filed by the people
supporting ibus, while sometimes claiming maintainership for
scim-related packages. I've discussed with Tz-Huang and Rolf, who were
until recently alone in working on this package, that we want to
establish a group, for obvious reasons outside of the current pkg-ime
group, that contains Tz-Huang, Rolf, and me, that will claim
maintainership for all scim-related packages. Also, at least the most
important problems (no "im-bridge") are now resolved in the scim 1.4.14
package, which is in unstable.
But to my great chagrin, the removals filed and executed so far, have
left scim in a barely usable state, as the two most important input
methods, scim-pinyin and scim-tables, which, together with the packages
hanging below them, cover the vast majority of input methods, have been
killed already. This will at least prevent practical scim usage in
Wheezy for any new installs. I therefore request that you re-think that
course of action, and allow swift re-introduction of possibly
stripped-down packages - one of the pet peeves of the ibus folks seems
to be the python interfaces to scim libraries, as far as I can see, and
the other pet peeve, no im-bridge, has been resolved in the meantime.
As a follow-up to my earlier email that this is a reply to, I have in
the meantime verified that scim-tables covers several CJK input methods,
along with at least several Indian languages, Tamil, Kannada, Amharic,
Arabic, Russian, and a few other languages as well. scim-pinyin covers
the pinyin based IMEs, and eg. the scim-sunpinyin, if it is really a
problem, should be simple to disable in the control file.
As a position statement, I can only re-iterate what I have so far said
to both the ibus and the other two scim folks, that my primary concern
is to have a fully functional IME package in Debian, but so far, I see
that while there is some overlap between ibus and scim, both have at
least their distinct use cases as of now, and can't fully replace each
other, so it's imho important to keep a working set of scim packages in
Debian for Wheezy, otherwise, people would simply be forced to use ibus
(and fcitx, also sometimes suggested as an alternative, seems to be none
for all those who have a requirement for support of non-CJK languages).
Please advise.
Kind regards,
--Toni++
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