Hi [Resending to keep bugs.debian.org in the loop]
Dne Sun, 26 Apr 2015 22:52:27 +0200 (CEST)
Tomas Pospisek <tpo_...@sourcepole.ch> napsal(a):
> I think you are interpreting the Debian policy too narrowly.
>
> I agree with you that the policy page says that "When several packages all
> provide different versions of the same program or file" ...
>
> However that does not represent the actual usage of alternatives inside
> Debian:
>
> $ update-alternatives --list editor
> /bin/ed
> /usr/bin/mcedit
> /usr/bin/vim.basic
> /usr/bin/vim.nox
> /usr/bin/vim.tiny
>
> Unless you can prove me otherwise, I'll maintain that neither 'ed' nor
> 'vim' contain a program called 'editor'. Nor do pinfo or info contain a
> program called 'infobrowser':
>
> $ update-alternatives --list infobrowser
> /usr/bin/info
> /usr/bin/pinfo
>
> I think if you look, you will find more examples of such usage in
> /etc/alternatives.
>
> Now let's consult the update-alternatives man page for referrence:
>
> "It is possible for several programs fulfilling the same or similar
> functions [sic!] to be installed on a single system at the same time.
> For example, many systems have several text editors installed at once.
> This gives choice to the users of a system, allowing each to use a
> different editor, if desired, but makes it difficult for a program to
> make a good choice for an editor to invoke if the user has not
> specified a particular preference."
I think you're mixing up two different things there. There are indeed
few generic alternatives within Debian (like editor, view, www-browser
or pager), however display is not one of them. It is a program with
defined command line interface provided by ImageMagick (or rather
graphicsmagick-imagemagick-compat these days). So I don't think it's
good idea to mix it with alternatives and completely different tool.
Anyway if you want to do this, you first need to persuade
graphicsmagick-imagemagick-compat maintainers to make /usr/bin/display
use alternatives and then report bugs against different viewers to
support this interface.
PS: I still think that xdg-open or see are better tools for this
purpose...
--
Michal Čihař | http://cihar.com | http://blog.cihar.com
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