[Debian GNUstep maintainers] gworkspace

[Jonathan Shipley]

Eric Heintzmann <eric@gnustep.fr.st> writes:

>     Hi,
>
> I want to update the list of recommended applications by gworkspace.
> I suggest :
>
> Recommends: preferences (or preferences.app), wrapperfactory.app,
> preview.app (or imageviewer), textedit.app, viewpdf.app, zipper.app
>
> Suggests: gworkspace-apps-wrappers
>
> Any ideas ?
>

Hi,

I would put gworkspace-apps-wrappers in at Recommends level.  Without
it, you don't have access to the rest of the Debian system.  It would be
highly unusual, in my view, to have an installation of GWorkspace
without gnustep-apps-wrappers.  This is highlighted by the fact the
wrappers are actually distributed in the GWorkspace source.  Putting
them in at Suggests level fails to make this strong relationship clear.
I would also argue that there need to be more apps-wrappers, or an
alternate way for GWorkspace to interact with the rest of the Debian
system.

By the same reasoning I think wrapperfactory.app is right to go in at
Recommends level.  It might be essential for some users.

I would like Zipper to go in at Recommends level but I don't think it is
mature enough yet.  It has too many issues for it to be essential for an
installation.  My take is that this package may enhance GWorkspace for
some users, and that there is certainly a relationship.  Suggests,
though, not recommends.  At least until the user interface has been
honed at little.  I made a list of the issues below.

Preview seems better than ImageViewer -- it lets you resize images.

Zipper

I have been looking forward to having an app that lists compressed files
for some time.  This one doesn't seem to play well with GWorkspace
though.

  1.  I couldn't open a .tar.gz file from within GWorkspace by
      double-clicking on the file.  If Zipper was already running it
      would open as expected, but not otherwise.  This doesn't feel like
      a positive user experience to me.

      I couldn't create a new archive when Zipper was not running.  When
      it was running GWorkspace had a tendancy to timeout when I was
      dealing with the archive destination.  I always liked winzip's
      option of providing quick 'create archive / extract archive'
      options.  Zipper doesn't provide it.

  2.  The manual page doesn't describe the app in sufficient detail.  I
      had to read the web page.  Which was not mentioned in the man
      page.  I had to grep it from apt-cache show.  The package
      description fails to detail what compressed files it opens. From
      the web page: "Currently, you can view and extract .tar, .tar.gz,
      .tar.bz2, .rar, .lha, .lhz and .zip archives."

  3.  There is no horizontal scroller in the Zipper viewing window, so
      when looking at files with long paths I had to resize the window.
      It really needs a horizontal scroller.

  4.  It would be nice if there was a dialogue box / progress meter that
      popped up when opening huge archives.  Something to indicate that
      it was working...

  5.  The copyright notice means that this software is probably not free
      by Debian's definition.
      
      $ grep -i copyright *
      ZipperInfo.plist:       Copyright = "Copyright (C) 2003/2004 Dirk Olmes";
      ZipperInfo.plist: CopyrightDescription = "Do with Zipper what you
      like and don't bother me with licensing issues.";

      The source archive does not have an explicit copyright notice
      (Zipper-0.9).

  6.  There a something of a user-interface issue in that it grabs the
      .gz file extension, even when the underlying file is not an
      archive.  This is really a limitation of GNUstep's overly simple
      extension => tools mapping that I have mentioned before.  It might
      be better if it put the file.gz in the window, thereby allowing
      you to extract/gunzip it through the interface.  Zipper needs to
      deal with this case better.


Regards,
-- 
Jonathan