Re: [Gnumed-devel] Texlive and Gnumed

[Karsten Hilbert]

@Andreas: please downgrade konsolekalendar to Suggests:

        (reasoning inline if you care to read it)

On Mon, Mar 08, 2010 at 01:01:53AM -0400, Allan MacKinnon wrote:

> > There are no such plans. We just added TeX with 0.6. You need TeX to
> > print medication lists and letters. We also did lower the dependency to
> > texlive-base dropping -extras.
> 
> Yeah, I knew Texlive was added for that reason, but I was holding out for a
> smaller substitute.  Preferably one already available on a vanilla
> installation of Debian or Ubuntu.

I see. Unfortunately, no TeX support is available on vanilla
of either.

> Be careful, texlive-latex-extra is still being installed, even if it is a
> recommend.

As Sebastian pointed out that depends on the local
configuration. It is certainly not required.

>  It has the potential to pull in a bunch of packages as it's own
> dependencies which can greatly increase the size of the installation.

That's right. People who (need to) care about that should
take care of not installing Recommends: automatically.

> However, KonsoleKalendar is a 'Recommend' and WILL be installed
> automatically, as well as much of KDE as dependencies.  In this case it's
> not so much as HOW MUCH is being downloaded, but WHAT is being downloaded.

I agree to lower konsolekalendar to Suggests. It is not a
good idea to pull in the base of KDE just because of that. I
do not think that - per se - "Recommends: konsolekalendar"
is a bad idea. But I do agree the unfortunate combination of
some user friendly distros like Ubuntu installing Recommends
by default and konsolekalendar (obviously) needing KDE is an
unhappy triad.

> I had problems in the past trying to get KDE programs working under Gnome,
> so I often warn others to avoid listing desktop components as
> Depends/Recs/Sugs unless absolutely necessary.  I usually suggest programs
> that aren't desktop components, like using Pidgin instead of Empathy or
> Kopete.

That is not an option since we do want to support KOrganizer
so we do need konsolekalendar.

> Is it possible to get the package to choose between korganizer and osmo
> depending on what desktop the user has?

No.

> Osmo is GTK+ based and more suited for Gnome.

While this may be true we don't have any osmo support in
GNUmed so there's no use in having a dependency for it.

> Were KonsoleKalendar and Korganizer aesthetic choices or do they have some
> legitimate integration with GNUmed?

konsolekalendar does and, by extension, korganizer

> Does apt select packages using the "either | or" argument based on the size
> of the potential download or does it go for the first package mentioned in
> the argument when both are absent?

I am not sure this is particularly well defined. Typically
it picks the first in sequence.

> Can you use conditional statements in deb packages so osmo will be installed
> if a core Gnome library is installed, and likewise with KonsoleKalendar and
> KDE core packages.

No.

> That's okay.  Remember though, Recommends are installed by default

No. Only if your system is configured that way.

> > The installation size of GNUmed + TeX is easily dwarfed by any
> > meaningful use of the GNUmed EMR - databases will run up to several
> > Gigabyte. The one I am taking care of currently is 7 Gig with no
> > shortage of disk space in sight on their 200 GB hard drive.
> >
> Database size doesn't enter into what I'm pointing out.  Fill up that drive
> if need be.

Well, you are trying to minimize one-time costs at the time
of purchase which are quickly dwarfed by runtime costs in
day-to-day operations. That's hardly ever a wise economical
decision unless one plans on throw-away economics where you
buy-install more often than you use.

> Texlive adds the needed functionality: THAT IS FINE.  All for it.  I was
> hoping for a smaller, simpler solution but that seems to be out of our hands
> since neither of us know of a decent replacement.  I was really hoping you
> remembered the other candidates for the role Texlive inevitably took so we
> could have discussed them.

It is not really that hard to write another forms engine
within GNUmed. So if you can point out a markup language
which produces

- professionally looking PDF in an
- extremely flexible way from
- plain text source format

I am all for considering that in addition.

>    2. "Auto Removable" packages that should NOT be autoremoved

I know. Those should truthfully be labelled "not depended on packages".

> I noticed and I'm sure network admins would, too.  Updating 100 computers
> with 100MB patches can really eat up bandwidth, bring the whole network down
> to a crawl and pretty much ensure no one gets any work done that day.
> Something that is a very serious concern considering how busy such a network
> normally is and how lives depend on that work.

A place with 100 machines should set up a mirror and locally
upgrade from that.

> Since this wasn't as KDE-linked as I thought (save the bit about
> osmo/korganizer) and neither of us know of a smaller replacement for Texlive
> I guess that's where that stops.  I haven't heard of any complaints about
> Texlive functionality itself and that really wasn't my issue.
> 
> I hope that shed more light on my concerns.

Sure, and I hope with demoting konsolekalendar to Suggests:
we can somewhat alleviate the concern.

Karsten
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