Package: flashplugin-nonfree Severity: wishlist
Suggestion by Edward Welbourne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.
--- Begin Message ---Hi various debian package maintainers, I handle the technical issues of packaging for the Opera browser. I've lately been reviewing what we Suggest for debian. Since there is no virtual package for flash plugins, it's necessary to list all, which is both tedious for browser package maintainers and unfair to plugin package maintainers; if I miss someone out, that would have worked, there's no way for them to mark their package as being suitable to the task; and my users won't know about it as an option for meeting their needs. There are some plugins that are specific to one browser, or family; but support for NPAPI is widespread enough that plugins which support it could sensibly advertise themselves to browsers that support it via a virtual package. It would thus make sense to have *-npapi-plugin virtual packages (or, indeed, simply *-npapi, since NPAPI is a plugin API) that each NPAPI-compatible *-plugin (for * = flash, pdf, ...) could Provide and each browser could Suggest, thereby making everyone's lives easier. This would be analogous to the existing virtual package www-browser, which any plugin can simply Suggest, rather than having to maintain an up-to-date list of known browsers. There might be some value in specifying a separate www-npapi-browser, but any NPAPI-compatibility plugin for a browser that doesn't do NPAPI itself would suffice to blurr that distinction into oblivion. However, I'm not familiar enough with Debian's process for deciding what virtual packages should exist, or for creating them. Does a flash-npapi-plugin virtual package sound a worthwhile idea to you, variously ? What would I need to do to get it put into effect ? Eddy.
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