Bug#225833: Letter vs A4 again
Frank Küster <frank@debian.org> writes:
> Greg Stark <gsstark@mit.edu> wrote:
>
> > would describe this, Debian users expect packages to user /etc/papersize and
> > work automatically and won't have read any install document before installing
> > the package.
>
> OpenOffice doesn't use libpaper, either. And I think this is a sane
> decision: A program that is designed to handle different paper sizes on
> a document-per-document basis should not assume some system-wide
> default. This will only confuse things.
You have to default to something, it may as well be something reasonable. You
would prefer eliminating /etc/papersize and having every package have its own
configuration? Or having the user have to set the paper size on every document?
> That's just the same as new users don't know how to specifiy unusual
> page geometries, or include a picture, or whatever.
You seem to be equating configuring paper sizes with run-time usage like
understanding how to write LaTeX code. But it's not the same thing at all,
it's generally a one-time configuration at install time. Normally users would
expect a system with TeX installed would already be configured properly by the
sysadmin when the package was installed.
> > The install messages don't say anything about tetexconfig-sys. It doesn't
> > document that tetex doesn't obey /etc/papersize. Neither does the man page
> > point them towards this FAQ or any other documentation. It just leaves them
> > hanging with no idea where to go from there.
>
> There's a long README.Debian in text and html form in the tetex-bin
> package. texconfig-sys is explained there. Using debconf messages for
> this would be debconf abuse. Maybe we can add a remark about papersizes
> in the configuration section of this document.
I still think the right thing is obviously to provide a script to set
tetexconfig-sys paper based on /etc/papersize. Run it on install and print a
message noting that it has to be rerun any time /etc/papersize is changed.
It's not perfect but it's the best you can do, /etc/papersize doesn't actually
change frequently and at least this way Debian users wouldn't be surprised on
install and left hanging.
The expectation is that /etc/papersize is respected and any package that has
to violate that should notify the user that an extra step is required to work
around the problem. There are plenty of packages that do similar things.
Things like update-inetd which prints a message noting that if you're using
xinetd you have to manually update xinetd.conf.
--
greg
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