Re: [Visualpython-users] OFSET/ Freeduc - distribution of VPython?

[Jonathan B. <jbr...@ea...>]

On Sun, 2003-06-08 at 15:29, Arthur wrote:
> For those who have the patience, I enclose below a rather lengthy 
> exchange with George Khaznadar, one of the key folks at OFSET
> 
> Organization for Free Software in Education and Teaching
> 
> http://www.ofset.org

> Response by Georges Khaznadar, of OFSET

What was his address?  I trust that you will forward this to Mr.
Khaznadar, but it would be easier if all parties could e-mail each other
directly.

>  > Please can you author a short manpage for visual ? the sections may be
>  > NAME, SYNOPSIS, DESCRIPTION, AUTHOR, INTERNET RESOURCES, LICENSING
>  > and each of them can be very short or pasted from your existing
>  > documentation. Don't worry with the groff syntax, just release it like
>  > plain text, I'll put it straight. Of course you can refer to your
>  > already written html documentation.

A man page for a library?  Perhaps for idle_VPython, but not for the
core visual module.  Ever run "man gtk+"?  I think that placing the
documentation under /usr/share/doc/python-visual, with the appropriate
pointers for dhelp would be best for the library docs.  Best in the
sence that it fits in with the Debian Policy.

However, if you do this, make sure that idle's help menu is updated to
point to the right place such that when a user presses F1 or selects the
menu item that the system webbrowser is pointed in the right place.

>  > I would be obliged if you could give me some hints about the
>  > building dependencies of your package. It seems to depend from at least
>  > gtkglarea5-dev, python2.2-dev. Have you noticed other dependances at
>  > build-time ?

Simply having gtkglarea5-dev isn't always enough.  Some form of OpenGL
support under gtkglarea is required.  gtkglarea5 depends on some OpenGL
back-end, but at least one person has complained before to us that their
GL support was busted in spite of this dependancy.

>  > As to dependencies, the only additional dependency not on your list is
>  > Numerical Python

Quite right.  In fact, if its not found, configure will bomb out with a
(hopefully useful) error message.  VPython Depends on python-numeric.

>  >Would you agree for renaming the debian package to python-visual ? It
>  >makes it more visible when browsing python resources available in a
>  >machine.

And follows Debian's standards for python package names.

That would be fine for a downstream distribution package name.  We don't
really plan to change the name here, and the debian documentation should
be more than adequate to point users in the right direction to complain
about/give thanks for this software.

Other notes:
You mentioned that the idle/idlefork issue will be moot since the "main"
fork of idle should be merged into Python 2.3.  Don't count your
chickens until they hatch.  That is the plan, but there remain some
severe bugs to work out first.  Taking the worst case (idlefork doesn't
make it), make sure that Idle for VPython doesn't conflict with the main
Idle.  We prevent this by keeping idle_VPython under the site-packages
directory, and installing a shell script named "vpython" in the PATH
that runs our version of idle.

Of course, I would love to see the new idlefork make it.  That last bit
was "just in case".

HTH,
-Jonathan