Bug#438551: xdvi doesn't work

[Andreas Degert <ad@papyrus-gmbh.de>]

On Sat, 18 Aug 2007 13:36:22 +0200
Frank Küster <frank@debian.org> wrote:

> Andreas Degert <ad@papyrus-gmbh.de> wrote:
> 
> > xdvi wants to use xdvi.bin which is not included in the package.
> > Symlinking from xdvi.bin to xdvi-xaw.bin in /usr/bin makes it work.
> 
> The symlink is supposed to go this way:
> 
> /usr/bin/xdvi.bin -> /etc/alternatives/xdvi.bin
> /etc/alternatives/xdvi.bin -> /usr/bin/xdvi-xaw.bin
> 
> (unless you have one of the far-eastern language support packages
> installed), and these symlinks are generated by update-alternatives.
> What is the output on your system of
> 
> update-alternatives --display xdvi.bin

xdvi.bin - status is manual.
 link currently absent
/usr/bin/xdvi-xaw.bin - priority 30
Current `best' version is /usr/bin/xdvi-xaw.bin.

> update-alternatives --config xdvi.bin

There is only 1 program which provides xdvi.bin
(/usr/bin/xdvi-xaw.bin). Nothing to configure.

> 

hmm... I just looked what the postinst is doing, you are grepping for
"status is manual"... since I installed texlive-base-bin in a
LANG=de_DE environment, the text output is different (the above output
was produced with LANG=C to make it readable in english, now I realize I
accidentally removed the most important bit of information ;-)

What do you think of changing

if update-alternatives --display xdvi.bin | grep -q "status is manual" ; then
    if update-alternatives --display xdvi.bin | grep -q "link currently points to /usr/bin/xdvi.real" ; then

to something like

xdvi_alternatives () {
  LANG=C update-alternatives --display xdvi.bin  | grep -q "$1"
}
if xdvi_alternatives "status is manual"; then
     if xdvi_alternatives "link currently points to /usr/bin/xdvi.real"; then