[Pkg-octave-devel] Fwd: Popcon stats for the DOG packages

[Philip Nienhuis]

Carnë Draug wrote:
> On 11 March 2012 17:00, Philip Nienhuis<pr.nienhuis at hccnet.nl>  wrote:
>> Sébastien Villemot wrote:
>>>                                          the dependency is not enforced
>>> on Debian. We should probably change that in the future.
>>
>> I'd conclude that situation can only mean that I underestimated the need out
>> there for JSON/PCH/fexist functionality....
>
> Another conclusion, much more negative, is that there's many users who
> installed the io package and, unable to use it, gave up

Maybe. But if the xlsopen/odsopen scripts cannot find supporting system 
SW (ActiveX or Java) they clearly say so. That should ring a bell.

But perhaps I could add better messages (there's still time before 
io-1.0.18):

- (Windows only) if no ActiveX/COM found: "Apparently no MS-Excel 
installed, trying to fall back to Java"

- If no Java is found: "No Java JRE or JDK detected - essential for 
spreadsheet support"

- If Java was detected but no Octave-Java support was found: "Have you 
installed AND loaded the Java package?"

OTOH, if people want to use fairly complex programs like Octave, I think 
it is reasonable to expect them to have a significantly higher level of 
computer literacy than people who only use e-mail, text processing and 
web browsers.

                                                         (of octave or
> spreadsheet --- hopefully the later) instead of fixing it by
> installing the java package.

Perhaps it would help if the dependencies could be made platform-specific:

- Windows pkg OR Java pkg on Windows
- Java pkg on all other platforms

but currently that is not supported by Octave (-Forge).

Philip