On Sat, Aug 15, 2015 at 06:56:01PM +0200, Denis Mugnier wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I search to add short descriptions missed and I found xkeystone installed by
> xrandr package.
> 
> xkeystone is a Nickle (see http://nickle.org/) script. So BLFS book don't
> report Nickle as a dependency of the xrand package.
> But this script has no manpage. It isn't documented, and it seems
> useless.....
> 
> Archlinux delete it
> (https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/tree/PKGBUILD?h=xorg-xrandr-git)
> Gentoo delete it (http://gpo.zugaina.org/AJAX/Ebuild/2875478/View)
> Debian  : a bugreport is opened
> (https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=579185)
> 
> 
> My proposal 1 is to delete it (rm /usr/bin/xkeystone ) .
> 
> My proposal 2 is to not list this script as program installed.
> 
> My proposal 3 is to add a note about the Nickle dependency.
> 
> My proposal 4 is to do nothing ;o)
> 
> What do you prefer ?
> 
> Regards.

Fro mthe debian bug report (2010) not only does it need nickle, it
also needs the nickle cairo bindings (cairo-5c), and then it is
apparently useless.  But that was in 2010.  Ah, I see that got
further comments which were then denied.  I particularly liked:

|>     * does not work well without modification;
|
|Not true.
|
|>     * does not seem to do anything useful;
|
|Not true.
|
|>     * has no documentation and nobody seems to know what it is
|>     supposed
|>       to do;
|
|Not true, at least for the second part.
|
|> it seems that it is useful to nobody and only triggers questions
|> such as “what it that utility?”, “why does it not work?”, etc.
|> Considering its advantages (none) vs. its disadvantages (causes
|> questions and bug reports), perhaps the most appropriate course of
|> action to deal with it would be to simply drop it, and patch the
|> other manpages like xrandr(1) to stop referring to its
|> non-existant
|> manpage, what do you think?
|> 
|Disagree.

Which tells everybody absolutely nothing about what it is for.

Arch probably delete it because of
https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/21494

OTOH, according to
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35984 Keith Packard
said it works on debian (that was in 2011, version of debian
not specified).

Also in 2013, replicating the problems:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/xrandr-broken-dependency-in-%3D13-37-a-4175452776/

There seem to be zero manpages.  Looking at xkeystone,
the only comment I can see is at line 193 and it starts

/*
 * Ok, given an source quad and a dest rectangle, compute
 * a transform that maps the rectangle to q. That's easier
 * as the rectangle has some nice simple properties. Invert
 * the matrix to find the opposite mapping
 *
 *  q0    q1
 *
 *  q3    q2
 *
 *  | m00 m01 m02 |
 *  | m10 m11 m12 |
 *  | m20 m21 m22 |
 *

and continues for quite a long way.  I have no idea what it would be
used for, but it sounds like one of the example programs that used
to be so common in Xorg.

Maybe we should mention nickle and cairo-5c as optional deps, with a
comment "only if you wish to try to run the undocumented xkeyhost
script".

Although that linuxquestions thread reported that nichrome-5c was
apparently missing in a source build for slackware, and could not be
found, debian apparently have supplied it as part of cairo-5c, so
perhaps there is more to it than just building cairo-5c from the
official source (debian patches or other shenanigans).

And then in the install "Unless you installed the optional
dependencies, remove an undocumented script which is reported to be
broken."

Alternatively, just remove it (undocumented, reported to be broken).

ĸen
-- 
This one goes up to eleven: but only on a clear day, with the wind in
the right direction.
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