Robert Dodier wrote:
> On 12/27/06, Leo <sdl.web at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> * Robert Dodier (2006-12-27 12:31 -0700) said:
>>> On 12/27/06, Rex Dieter <rdieter at math.unl.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Attached is the patch to enable use of xdg-utils in place of
>>>> hard-coded calls to web browses, ps/pdf apps.
>>> I'm pretty strongly opposed to merging this patch into Maxima cvs.
>>> It makes Maxima dependent on xdg-utils, which, I am pretty sure, is
>>> less widely installed than ghostview (whatever it is called).
>
>> As I understand it, xdg-utils is there to select the program, be it
>> ghostview, gv, evince or kpdf i.e. it is a more general
>> approach. Besides, it is a bunch of sh scripts that means it can be
>> installed in most systems.
>
> It is not the size of xdg-utils that matters here but its presence or absence.
> For every new package dependency, the number of systems for
> which Maxima can be successfully installed is decreased.
> Xdg-utils seems like a minor convenience, so on the balance it
> seems like a pretty bad move to make Maxima depend on it.
>
> On some systems (Gentoo, maybe others) new dependencies may be
> less of a problem. I'll let the maintainers for other systems sort it out.
> In general, however, we cannot assume that new dependencies are
> resolved automatically.
What about this:
try xdg-utils first, and if it isn't available fall back to the list?
Cheers,
CY