potato: why does new slang1 preclude modconf, whiptail, gimp, ae,...?

[Hwei Sheng TEOH <hsteoh@cs.toronto.edu>]

I've been getting a strange scenario lately with trying to upgrade to
potato... after I did a `apt-get update', I noticed that `apt-get -s upgrade'
noted that slang1 was being kept back. Curious as to why slang1 was being kept
back, I did a `apt-get -s install slang1' and apt-get responded that the
packages ae, gimp, modconf, newt0.30, whiptail would have been *removed*.

Apparently there is some dependency problem around newt0.30 and whiptail that
caused a cascade of packages to need removal? But what I really *don't*
understand is why gimp would be removed. What has it got to do with
newt/whiptail anyway??! Also, isn't ae supposed to be a base package? Why is
it removing ae? (Or am I missing the fact that ae is now part of some other
package somewhere out there?)


T