[Debian-med-packaging] Bug#639996: Bug#639996: Bug#639996: fastdnaml is not able to start in GNOME

[Andreas Tille]

On Thu, Sep 01, 2011 at 03:47:18PM +0100, Tim Booth wrote:
> There is an icon for fastDNAml in BL6, but it serves absolutely no
> useful function whatsoever, since all it does is to bring up a terminal
> and show the version of fastDNAml which is installed.
> 
> So I've made a note to remove the icon in BL6, unless I can be bothered
> to add a wrapper script that does something useful.

It is nice that you agree that just bringing up a terminal does not do
much good for the user.  To enlighten my idea for "teaching the user"
a bit I would like to point you to

   http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/blends/projects/med/trunk/debian-med/menu/bio/

which is part of the Debian Med package.  *If* you are using Debian Menu
(which these day is not very often the case) *and* you are using med-bio
with user menus the blends framework cares for a user menu which does
the following:

   1. Tweak the menu entry to do something more reasonable for a Debian Med
      user - in the case of ncbi-tools-x11 for instance this is arranging
      a sub-menu in Med/Biology/ncbi-tools-x11 to make it better accessible
      amongst all other biology programs

   2. Call less in a terminal if there is some <package>.txt file provided
      to explain the usage of the program

   3. Call a browser if there is some <package>.html file provided
      to give better layout options when explaining the usage of the
       program

   Remark: There could be a simple option to fire up a terminal with the
   manpage.

Despite the fact that Debian Menu is considered outdated and is not used
by freedesktop.org environment users in principle I like this what I
mean with "teaching the user" rather than blindly firing up a terminal.

I could perfectly imagine to "port" this principle to freedesktop.org
environments.  I would be motivated to move this slightly higher on my
todo list if somebody would tell me: Hey, that's useful, please code
this.  (I never heard something like this about the Blends Debian user
menu - probably because it is not known / used.)


To come back to the actual fastDNAml package, would you think that
clicking on the menu entry will fire up a browser pointing to something
like

    http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/blends/projects/med/trunk/debian-med/menu/bio/fastdnaml.html?revision=845&view=co

(perhaps with a more reasonable / complete text) would be a reasonable
thing to do?

Kind regards

       Andreas.

-- 
http://fam-tille.de