Hi,
This is specifically a response to the konq-plugins bug. However,
I'm CCing it to the similar kdebase bug that appeared recently since
I expect the general issues involved are the same.
Anyway, regarding konq-plugins:
konq-plugins recommends imagemagick, presumably for the image gallery
creation plugin. It must be a good idea that imagemagick is
suggested, but it
shouldn't be recommended since image gallery creation is not the
only plugin.
The counterargument is: Suppose a user installs konq-plugins,
expecting that the plugins will "just work". If a user tries to use
a plugin that needs some missing program:
1. In the worst case the plugin will fail or crash with a mysterious
error message that means little to the user.
2. In an ideal world, the plugin will pop up a pretty dialog that
says "sorry, you need to install the foobar package". This probably
won't happen unless somebody goes through and patches the KDE sources
to describe debian package requirements.
3. In probably the best case that we can realistically hope for, the
plugin will pop up a dialog that says "I cannot find /usr/bin/
dofoobar", at which point the user rummages about to find which
debian package provides /usr/bin/dofoobar and then installs it
themselves.
I'd argue that for users who don't know what they're doing, we should
avoid (1) at all costs. At the other end of the spectrum, I'd say
that (2) is perfectly acceptable but will probably not happen in
reality since it requires constant maintenance of debian-specific
patches.
On the other hand, I'd say that (3) is fine for experienced users who
know what they're doing. This is more or less what recommends are for.
So I'd argue that recommending imagemagick is indeed the correct
solution (I was even more conservative when I maintained konq-plugins
-- IIRC I had it as a depends). In particular, my vote (for what
it's worth) is that imagemagick should not be weakened to a suggests.
Ben.
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