Sorry to hear you've removed ivtools from the Debian distribution.
I would like to point out a few things that might make you reconsider. First off, although Guenter Geiger made a request for someone else to adapt the package more than 8 years ago, the latest packages were from a 2008 release of the source (ivtools-1.2.6). People have been investing their time to try and keep this software up to date with the constantly evolving Debian guidelines and gcc compiler versions. Casually tossing out it on a single request seems to merit a little more justification than simply the date of an intent- to-orphan request and a popularity metric. If there is some fundamental problem with the source code or packaging that can not be fixed with an NMU it should be documented.
And there are users. But if there is some minimal number of users below which Debian must not support a package, I would like to point out the historical and academic value of this package, which embodies John Vlissides' Unidraw framework and the InterViews toolkit from Stanford University. These have inspired the design of a good number of intellectually derivative works such as Qt, Java Swing, and the Eclipse GEF framework. And having that simple and easy-to-use binary copy of idraw available on a Unix distribution is somewhat akin to keeping ed or vi available as well.
If there is anything I can do to help with the re-instatement of ivtools in the Debian distribution please let me know. I would point out that the latest release (ivtools-1.2.8) upgraded the source to be compatible with Ubuntu 9.10 and gcc-4.4.
Scott Johnston http://www.ivtools.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
