[NEW IDEA] Automatic removal of dependencies

[Michael A. Peters]

On Wed, 2006-04-26 at 23:24 -0500, Callum Lerwick wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-04-25 at 22:37 -0700, Michael A. Peters wrote:
> > That assumes that the end user knows what a package is and what it does.
> > Say I had no clue that mathml-fonts were needed to properly view the
> > blog of my Physics professor. I might not even know what mathml is. It
> > just works because something else pulled them in as a dependency.
> 
> Grasping at straws, eh? If firefox supports mathml and needs
> mathml-fonts to display properly, then perhaps firefox should be
> depending on mathml-fonts. Or at least putting up some kind of message
> like "This page cannot be displayed properly, you need mathml-fonts".

Firefox does notify the user that they are missing fonts.
It then directs them to instructions (if I remember) that are a
sub-optimal way of installing them on a system that already has the
packaged.

The point is that there will be software users have need for that they
don't necessarily know they have a need for.