Simo Sorce (simo@redhat.com) said:
Ok this is just an example that hit me today, so I wonder what is the opinion here, please do not concentrate on the problem at hand but on the general problem it highlights (user experience on server).
In a headless F20 if you "yum install firefox" you get a broken application when you want to run it through an ssh session (I ssh -Y in my VM).
I think this is a reasonably common mode of operation, and yet installing firefox does not bring in all the dependencies it needs to actually work.
The font problem is more or less like this:
- The set of fonts required by your app is the union of: - a font for the charset of your current locale - a font for the charset of other locales in use on the system - a font for the charset of any content you may read
Furthermore, the only automatic font metadata we have is the automated reading of font charset coverage that adds (font:lang=<foo>) provides to fonts if there is charset coverage.
This: - can lead to suboptimal provides/false positives - has no mechanism for picking the *default* font for a locale
Hence, the current best practices for running X apps remotely is "if you want to run X apps remotely, install the @fonts group", which will include default fonts for maximal language coverage.
It's not great in that it can't be done with strict RPM dependencies, but trying to do so would require hardcoding default metadata in multiple places (certainly wouldn't want to do each application),
Bill