Re: [gentoo-user] Re: What is up with the libreoffice ebuild?

["Canek Peláez Valdés" <caneko@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 5:12 PM, Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2011-09-06, Canek Pel??ez Vald??s <caneko@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Nobody is forcing you to anything: but upstream projects (like
>> LibreOffice) need to fulfill the needs of all their users... not only
>> you. Don't force *them* to support every single printing system in the
>> planet earth;
>
> I wasn't complaining about lack of support for other printing systems.

And I wasn't talking to you, I was talking to Alan.

> I was complaining about the lack of support for _no_ printing system.
> It seems dumb to make somebody without a printer install CUPs seems.

I don't have a printer, and I need CUPS. Again, it's not about the
necessities of one user (being you or me), it's about the necessities
of the majority. And the majority of users installing LibreOffice
*need* printing support. And CUPS is the best option available.

>> Because the Open Source community has limited resources. The
>> LibreOffice devs (or maybe the Gentoo ones) choose to support CUPS and
>> only CUPS, because it takes care of the most cases, not only yours.
>
> What about the lack of a CUPS install would make LibreOffice fail?
> Does LibreOffice depend on libraries provided by CUPS even if you
> don't want to print?

That's not the point: the point is that you want to force *another*
configuration that the devs have to test and maintain and QA, and you
don't seem to care that your use-case is not very common.

In other words: if the devs keep allowing LO without CUPS support,
they need to spend time and effort to make sure that this option
works. On the other hand, if they make CUPS mandatory they only need
to worry about the normal/common case of users of office suites having
the need to print, and the cost is to force a tiny (less than 10 Mb
program) to some (very few) users.

> As for cups being "huge", the standard install comprises over 500
> files. That's still huge in my book.

Again, if you are installing LibreOffice, which has 3098 files and
uses 260 Mb of hd space, it makes no sense at all that you complain
against CUPS size.

Regards.
-- 
Canek Peláez Valdés
Posgrado en Ciencia e Ingeniería de la Computación
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México