language-support-ja needs to be depended on scim-gtk2-immodule

[Jun Kobayashi]

scim-gtk2-immodule needed for Japanese users to show "lookup window" under the caret. This is necessary for Japanese users because we need to select correct Kana-Kanji mixed phrase from lookup window including some candidate phrase.

[Ikuya Awashiro (ikuya-fruitsbasket)]

New version of language-support-ja has released, but this bug is not fixed.

[Ming Hua (minghua)]

I discussed with Atie and Freeflying on IRC about this bug.

I don't know the real decision and situation yet, all I have is a vague comment from Freeflying:
<freeflying> minghua: language-pack-kde-zh can not depend on these
(and "these" here means scim-gtk2-immodule and scim-qtimm.)

I don't know why, but that's not really relevant. What I want to comment here, is that Atie and Freeflying suggested to have scim (or scim module packages) to depend on scim-gtk2-immodule and/or scim-qtimm instead, and I think it's a VERY WRONG idea and strongly object to it.

I have two reasons:

1. Having scim depending on scim-gtk2-immodule/scim-qtimm is the wrong demonstration of the package relationship. The package scim-gtk2-immodule is an extra enhancement package to scim, not a critical component. scim can work in GTK+ applications and GNOME enviroment without scim-gtk2-immodule just fine, using the XIM mode (see more details in /usr/share/doc/scim/README.Debian.gz of scim package). Granted, scim-gtk2-immodule is an important enhancement and many users use it, but still scim works fine without it (that's why it is split out as a separate package in the first place). So I believe the current Recommends is the correct relation. I don't know much about scim-qtimm, but I assume the situation is similar.

2. scim-qtimm has a whole chain of Qt/KDE dependencies. Having scim depend on scim-qtimm means that anyone want to use scim, no matter if he uses GNOME, or even lighter XFCE/icewm/fvwm etc., will be forced to install the whole set of Qt and KDE libraries. In my opinion this situation is untolerable, especially that scim doesn't need scim-qtimm at all to work in non-Qt applications (be reminded scim even works in Qt applications WITHOUT scim-qtimm with proper configuration). For scim-gtk2-immodule there is a similar situation, but here we only have the GTK dependencies, not the GNOME ones, and as libscim8c2a package already has all the GTK dependencies (so anyone uses scim need to install GTK libraries anyway), this point is more or less moot.

[Ming Hua (minghua)]

So my opinion is that generally speaking, scim, or any module package, should NOT depend on scim-gtk2-immodule and/or scim-qtimm. Recommends is the correct relation, and scim Recommends scim-gtk2-immodule right now.

If the Japanese input method (I believe that's going to be scim-anthy) can't work in XIM mode, then scim-anthy in particular should depends on scim-gtk2-immodule.

[Ming Hua (minghua)]

I should also add that I think language-support-*, or some other language support meta-package, is the proper place to add scim-gtk2-immodle/scim-qtimm dependency.

The situation is like this - if you have a Japanese install, you need scim-anthy. If you are having a Japanese install for Ubuntu/GNOME, then it would be very good to install scim-gtk2-immodule as well, although (in my opinion) not essential. But unless you want to install some Qt/KDE applications as well, there is absolutely no reason you need to have scim-qtimm.

So this is better manipulated on the meta-package level, instead of introducing misrepresenting dependencies. If indeed it's impossible to introduce these dependencies to the language support meta-packages, I would be interested to hear the reason.

[atie (atie-at-matrix)]

language-support-ja is proper place to add Japanese specific request as Jun asked to begin with. And, I don't think this is a common case for all CJK scim modules.

[Ikuya Awashiro (ikuya-fruitsbasket)]

Hi Ming,

>I think it's a VERY WRONG idea and strongly object to it.
Yes, you are right.
But here is not a right place of discussing about it.

Martin, please change the dependency.

[Ming Hua (minghua)]

On Wed, Mar 08, 2006 at 04:28:40AM -0000, ikuya wrote:
>
> But here is not a right place of discussing about it.

You are absolutely right. I was under the wrong impression that many
CJK members favor the idea of adding dependency to scim and overreacted.
Sorry for the noise.

Ming
2006.03.07

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

ubuntu-desktop now depends on scim-gtk2-immodule; likewise, kubuntu-desktop depends on scim-qtimm.