[Dict-common-dev] News of the Debian dict-common project

Agustín Martín Domingo agmartin@aq.upm.es
Wed, 19 Jun 2002 14:15:25 +0200


Hi all,

Welcome to the latest news related to the dict-common project for
Debian. This project has to do with policy and common support for
ispell dictionaries and wordlists in Debian.

First of all let you know that the project has been announced in
June 18th, 2002 edition of Debian Weekly News.

Regarding real news, we have very good news for this mail:

- On the one hand, we are pleased to announce a further step in the
   dictionaries-common project: We now have at the sourceforge
   staging area ports to the new system of all ispell dictionaries
   and wordlists currently in Debian!

- On the other hand, we have a nice latest new: policy now covers
   compatibility with pspell-ispell modules (as of 0.6.0). That means
   that e.g. abiword now works properly with the ispell dictionaries
   following this new policy.

This means that we can make a full testing of the whole system to
debug for major problems. So, please, test and test. It is our point
of view that minor problems can be debugged in the official Debian
repository after the transition has been carried out.

This brings us to the need for a deadline. Our initial candidate for
a deadline was the end of this month, but real life, work on
integration of pspell support and building of the remaining packages
has taken a bit more than expected. This has probably made this
deadline too short. If we move the deadline to some week in July we
have the problem that August is coming and that in that month many
of us will be unavailable. So seems more reasonable to set the
deadline in the first days of September unless you really want the
transition to be done right now (that is, in a couple of weeks). In
any case please let us know what do you think about this.

One important thing: we are trying to do our best to keep in sync
packages in the sourceforge staging area with packages in Debian
unstable. But remember that both systems are no longer compatible,
so please do not upload any old style ispell dictionary or wordlist
packages to Debian in the meantime. That will confuse the transition.
If you really have to do it, drop us an email first. That way the
version in the Conflicts line of dictionaries-common can be changed
in time and your new package will not break anything. A new policy
package in sync with the official one (and a higher version) should
then be put at the sourceforge staging area.

Since the migration needs to be done in a highly coordinated way to
have it done in the minimum possible period of time after the deadline,
we need to know which are your plans with respect to it. Note that
after the new ispell and dictionaries-common are uploaded to Debian
all previous ispell dictionaries and wordlists will become
uninstallable.

So, please let us know what you do prefer. In any case, please contact
us through the dict-common-dev mailing list, so we know you are not MIA.

If you are still not subscribed to the dict-common-dev mailing list at
sourceforge, that is the best way to get in touch with us and discuss
the final details of the transition.

Remember that the project page is at:

http://dict-common.sourceforge.net/

Your dictionaries-common team:

Rafael Laboissičre,
David Coe,
Agustín Martín Domingo

-- 
=====================================================================
Agustin Martin Domingo, Dpto. de Fisica, ETS Arquitectura Madrid,
(U. Politecnica de Madrid)  tel: +34 91-336-6536, Fax: +34 91-336-6554,
email:agmartin@aq.upm.es, http://corbu.aq.upm.es/~agmartin/welcome.html