Bug#170678: xprt: living with xprint-xprintorg
Package: xprt
Version: 4.2.1-3
Severity: important
Tags: patch
Hi Branden,
as you know, I've now added xprint-xprintorg to the archives. There's a
couple of trivial changes worth making to xprt to fit in with my new
package. I've marked this bug report as "important", in line with bugs
#18061/#86881 (also marked as important), since xprt won't even pretend to
work without the config files provided by xprt-common. But since xprt
(XFree86's Xprt) doesn't work anyway in practice (with the config files it
starts but doesn't print), feel free to downgrade the severity.
xprint-xprintorg provides two binary packages:
xprt-common: config files and init script
xprt-xprintorg: server binary (Xprt).
I therefore recommend two changes to the xprt package:
1) update the description to point out that xprt does not work, and
xprt-xprintorg should be used instead. (should xprt recommend xprt-xprintorg?)
2) depend on xprt-common
I recommend against a third change:
3) let xprt conflict with xprt-xprintorg.
With respect to this latter point, I've arranged xprt-xprintorg to install
Xprt into /usr/bin, while xprt puts it in /usr/X11R6/bin/Xprt, so there is
no strict need for the two packages to conflict. The init script
/etc/init.d/xprint provided by xprt-common uses /usr/bin/Xprt
(xprt-xprintorg) if installed, otherwise it invokes /usr/X11R6/bin/Xprt
(xprt). For the record, Roland Mainz, the xprint.org upstream author, would
prefer the two to conflict, but I would prefer to override him on account of
freedom: if someone really wants to install xprt, even though it doesn't
work, then good luck to them. Maybe they just want to have a glimpse to see
what's wrong with it. Debian shouldn't prevent them from doing that.
Thus, I would recommend the xprt section of xfree86's control file to look
something like:
#######################################
Package: xprt
Architecture: any
Depends: xprt-common, ${shlibs:Depends}
Description: X print server (XFree86)
xprt provides an X server with the print extension and special DDX
(Device-Dependent X) implementation.
.
This package provides Xprt, the Xprint server from XFree86. Note that this
version is buggy and does not work with mozilla. You should install
xprt-xprintorg instead, which provides full support for printing from
mozilla, including non-latin characters and MathML.
#######################################
I'll leave it to you to decide if xprt should Recommends: xprt-xprintorg.
Note that the provision of xprt-common also permits bugs #18061/#86881 to
be closed.
Enjoy :)
Drew
p.s. with regards to bugs #21440/#31399, I'm planning to make some man pages
for xprint.org soon.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux strider 2.4.19 #1 Sun Aug 18 11:36:53 EST 2002 i686
Locale: LANG=ru_RU, LC_CTYPE=ru_RU
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