Bug#334611: tetex-bin: Please compile xdvi with lesstif2
On Tue, Oct 25, 2005 at 06:04:43PM +0200, Frank Küster wrote:
> Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> wrote:
>
> > On Wed, Oct 19, 2005 at 11:42:00AM +0200, Frank Küster wrote:
> >> Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> wrote:
> >>
> >> > Package: tetex-bin
> >> > Version: 3.0-9
> >> > Severity: wishlist
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > xdvi compiled with lesstif2 works fine, and it does IMHO have
> >> > a nicer user interface.
> >>
> >> Stefan Ulrich once said that he thinks lesstif support is still
> >> experimental, therefore I don't fell confident that we can make this the
> >> default. But in case that our discussion about the splitting of tetex
> >> packages leads to a "tetex-bin-nox" and "tetex-bin-x11", we could
> >> provide tetex-bin-x11-lesstif as an alternative.
> >
> > If you do this, I'd vote for tetex-bin and tetex-bin-nox.
> >
> > My personal opinion regarding dependencies on relatively common things
> > like X libraries is that people with that much limited space that it
> > would matter should better use a distribution like Gentoo that gives
> > them even more opportunities like compiling with -Os.
>
> In this case, the main motivation is not disk space. Rather, it is
> bandwidth and, in particular, installation time (the latter being
If the only difference of tetex-bin-nox is that the binaries depending
on X11 libraries are omitted this saves you perhaps 1% or 2% of a
tetex-bin + tetex-base installation.
And the X11 libraries should already be installed on all machines except
for a few servers.
> probably more important on buildds) for packages that Build-Depend on
> tetex-bin, and the wish not to install xlibs on a server (that creates
If someone needs the "convert" program he simply adds a build dependency
on imagemagick and look how much this pulls in.
You can optimize for many different things, and I'd personally consider
the user-visible points mirror and CD space and the number of packages
in the archive more important than a few seconds speedup at build time.
> PDF files) for tetex-bin as a Depends or for direct installation.
The only real problem eith installing X11 libraries on a server is in
the case of limited space. And if the space is that limited (which is
quite rare), a distribution like Gentoo is a better choice.
> > If an extra package is made (that takes space on both the ftp archive
> > and the CDs), the default that > 95% of all users want should be a
> > tetex-bin package with everything and there's no need to add an -x11
> > suffix to the package.
>
> The question is whether in fact >95% of the users want xdvi and texdoctk
> - how many people install tetex because they want to write TeX, and how
> many do it because some Depends or Recommends (e.g. documentation
> development packages, anything which can but need not use TeX as a
> backend) pulls it in? Plus the people who only create PDF.
>...
The question is for how many of these > 95% a few MB of disk space do
matter compared to the confusion because of having to choose from many
packages a subset sufficient for their usage.
And if they get teTeX through a task, they will anyways most likely get
everything.
Well, I'm only a former teTeX maintainer and you are a current teTeX
maintainer, so feel free to ignore my opinions... ;-)
> Regards, Frank
cu
Adrian
--
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"Only a promise," Lao Er said.
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