Linux and application installing

[kmmos1 at verizon.net]

On Sep 9, 2010, Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot at laposte.net> wrote: 


Le Jeu 9 septembre 2010 09:26, Alex Hudson a écrit :

> Fonts being in RPMs and supported in PackageKit is something I totally
> support, but attempting to re-use a more generic software installation
> UI to allow users to manage fonts seems severely sub-optimal to me.

Well, this thread is about specializing some of the package installation
interface (for desktop apps, for fonts, etc). I was just outlining the
requirements for fonts.

It needs works both packagekit-side and font packaging side, but there is
absolutely no way I'm going to expand energy on pushing the packaging changes
through FPC & other font packagers if there is no buy-in packagekit-side to
make use of them. Unlike application desktop files, font preview has a single
consumer, packagekit, so it's totally wasted work if the packagekit side is
missing.

Interesting discussion. I quite agree that work is needed at the graphical level, and that such effort is rather more important than analogous work at the console level. However, I wonder whether there may be some utility in exploring graphical solutions that are not inconsistent with similar capabilities at the console, perhaps even without X running. The idea of Unicode fonts available at the console from disk, or conceivably from a system or video BIOS, would extend the potential usefulness of the console if an implementation of font handling and selection could be unified for console and graphical applications. Just a thought.


Ken Marcy