> I'd very much appreciate hearing these suggestions. Please DON'T send them > directly to me; send them to [email protected] instead so they can > be considered and discussed by a number of people.
Having spent five years practicing law before escaping, I'd suggest you give up on any solution that involves people getting a clue before you waste any time on it . . . (OK, it comes up in college teaching, too :) What about a "suggests" rather than a "depends"? Or a dummy package to either grab all of the packages a "clueless" user would want, or (though probably a bad idea) make a dependency on "haveXfonts" which is satisfied either by the font package, or by another dummy package "fontserveravailable". Someone installing it who understands what a fontserver is, and how to handle such configurations, can probably handle difference. The clueless newbie, however, is more likely to get stuck and see it doesn't work. Giving him a clue isn't an option, leaving a choice between somehow accomodating him, and chasing him away. ONe thing on the "suggests"--dselect needs some type of cleaning in the way it handles these. Once you turn down a suggestion, it sometimes keeps coming back like a bad penny, both during that session, and later sessions, requiring an ongoing "forcing". Maybe add a "No, damnit" that's "stickier" ?? rick
