Re: Suggestion on structure of Graphics section of repository

[jfm2@club-internet.fr]

> 
> On Wed, 22 Jul 1998, Stephanie Lockwood wrote:
> 
> > It seems to me that a nice subheading for Graphics would be something like
> > "display" or "viewers", because there are a lot of people out there who
> > would just want to be able to look at various images without necessarily
> > wanting a big deal image editor like GIMP. 
>        
>   we could put imageMagick up there...  however, RH5x users will already
> have xv.
> 

Every "full sized" distrib including Slackware has both xv and
ImageMagick.  No need to do something special about them.


> another idea is repacking KDE/GNOME apps like kdvi kghostview etc as
> standalone viewers. 
> 

gv (who has replaced ghostview) is quite decent so I am not sure
kghostview provides a real bonus for non-KDE users.  At least not big
enough to be assigned top priority.

If you want to build an RPM who does not conflict with KDE you must
use shared files and AFAIK that is only possible if you make it with
the same SRPM.

> > As a start, xpdf and the ghostview postscripts stuff would go under this 
>     
> xpdf would. We haven't packaged gv since it is a standard package.
> Ghostscript itself isn't really a viewer. It might be worth packaging
> the GNOME/kde stuff as standalone apps, or something.
> 
> At the moment I am preoccupied with other things, but if you want to make
> RPMs of your favourite viewers though, go ahead and we can put them on the
> site. The only thing to keep in mind is that we don't want to repackage
> something that already comes with most distros (like xv) 
> 

Two reasons for packaging an app: -no package for doing the same thing
is included in the standard distribs, -the app provides a significant
improvement over the standard app specially inr user friendliness


> > one for the console as well 
> 
> we are trying to steer clear of SVGAlib ...
> 

The reasons: -SVGAlib is another thing to configure, in addition until
we get a configurator doing the configuration for X and SVGAlib there
is a chance the user forgets SVGalib the day he changes his card.

-SVGAlib is an inherent security problem because every program using
 it must be setuid root.  SVGAlib is ideal for one day needing
 anti-virus programs on Linux.

-SVGAlib is nearly dead.

-SVGAlib main use is action games.  About use in very small boxes that
is increasingly irrelevant now that 32M is about the smaller computers
you can get (and old ones have 16M).  Most people would tend to do
their real work (not games) with X, not with a graphic but not
windowed system.

-- 
			Jean Francois Martinez

The worthy man is the one who would drink muddy water if such were the
water of truth.