[Pkg-kde-extras] Bug#585456: [digikam] please don't depend on marble-data

[Filipus Klutiero]

Hi Mark,

On 2013-11-08 18:36, Mark Purcell wrote:
> tags 585456 wontfix
> affects 585456 marble-data
> quit
>
> On Thu, 10 Jun 2010 12:55:41 Filipus Klutiero wrote:
>> digikam depends on marble-data through a Depends on libmarblewidget.
>> marble is used for geolocation, which is not used by most people
> Filipus,
>
> I view geolocation to be a core function for digikam, so wont disable this
> capability.

I don't consider geolocation a *core* function, but geolocation certainly has great potential. I'm sorry for the brief report, I didn't mean this as a request to disable geolocation at all.

I should say I do not own a camera. Once every year or 2, I'll install Digikam to import photos from a relative's device. Digikam has never been lightweight, but with recent versions, it's gotten fatter. On my not-so-bare KDE install, installing Digikam (without disabling recommends) caused a 71 MB download and required 231 MB more of storage.

I'm sure people who love photography find Digikam's development great, but there may be a fair share of small users who would prefer that new features don't *necessarily* increase storage requirements much. I would love to see kde-standard bring digikam, but that's hard to imagine with the current dependencies set.

>
> Perhaps there is a way for marble-data to be reduced in size?
>
> Mark

marble-data is now a 13 MB download which takes 23 MB uncompressed. I am neither knowledgeable on Digikam or on Marble, but I took a quick look. marble-data contains more stuff than I imagined. Maps, icons, sounds, and map data. If I understand correctly, marble-data is mostly used for the Marble Virtual Globe's "Atlas map" type. From what I saw, it looks like Digikam doesn't need marble/data/maps/. That directory is 7 MB though, not a huge gain. On the other hand, the Atlas map is very minimal. I'm not seeing a city of 10 000, and that doesn't look at all like an exception. Therefore, the sizeable marble-data seems to only provide a map of minimal quality. Even locating a picture in the right city would seem difficult with the Atlas map.

Digikam offers 2 "backends" - Google Maps and Marble Virtual Globe. Marble Virtual Globe has 2 "types", Atlas map and OpenStreetMap. I imagine that the Google Maps backend requires connectivity, and Marble Virtual Globe's OpenStreetMap visibly does too. By default, Digikam uses the Atlas map. I wonder how hard it would be to have Digikam keep offering Geolocation unconditionally, but only offer the Atlas map when marble-data is installed.

-- 
Filipus Klutiero
http://www.philippecloutier.com