xfig needs fig2ps to export eps files

Hi Scott!

On Fri, 24 Sep 2004, Scott Thatcher wrote:

> Package: xfig
> Version: 1:3.2.5-alpha5-3
> Severity: important

> My version of xfig won't export to any format, giving the same
> message each time---fig2dev: command not found. I searched for
> fig2dev, and indeed it isn't on my system. I don't know if somehow
> it just got erased from my system, or if there is a dependency
> that's not quite right, but I thought I'd let you know.

You need to install the package "transfig", which contains fig2dev.
xfig doesn't depend on transfig but only recommend it, because there
may be situations where you only want to draw a picture but do not
want to export it to something different to the FIG format.

Except this the xfig package description mentions transfig:

Description: Facility for Interactive Generation of figures under X11
 [...]
 You should think about installing the transfig package to export the graphics
 to several common formats. You should also think about installing xfig-doc,
 which contains the documentation and xfig-libs, which contains several clip
 art libraries.
 [...]

And if you use "apt-cache search fig2dev" to search for fig2dev, you
also will find transfig because it's description contains fig2dev.

Is it okay to close this bugreport or do you see more need to discuss
the difference between "depend" and "recommend"?

Tschoeeee

        Roland

--
 * <email address hidden> * http://www.spinnaker.de/ *

On Sun, Sep 26, 2004 at 03:03:01PM +0200, Roland Rosenfeld wrote:
> Hi Scott!
>
> You need to install the package "transfig", which contains fig2dev.
> xfig doesn't depend on transfig but only recommend it, because there
> may be situations where you only want to draw a picture but do not
> want to export it to something different to the FIG format.
>
> Except this the xfig package description mentions transfig:
>

Roland,

Thanks for the reply! I realize what happened now. I've recently started
using dpkg --set-selections and apt-get dselect-upgrade to do my installs of
Debian, and I have tried to keep the list of packages in my install list
limited to just the names of the main packages (not all the libraries and
subsidiary packages), so that my list is easier to read through. In the past,
dselect itself has automatically tagged transfig for install as a suggested
package whenever I select xfig, but apt-get dselect-upgrade does not
automatically add transfig. In fact, unlike a regular invocation of "apt-get
install xfig", "apt-get dselect-upgrade" doesn't even remind me that there are
suggested packages. That's why I thought it always used to work, and that
something had changed recently.

I personally wouldn't mind seeing transfig upgraded to required, since so much
of what I consider essential functionality of xfig depends on it---it's
strange that an installed program would have a function in its drop-down menu
non-functional without an additional package. However, now that I know the
cause of my problem, I'm happy, and I'm sure you've thought through this issue
before. Please feel free to close this bug or take whatever action you see
fit.

Xfig was one of the first Unix/Linux programs I used, and I'm happy that it's
still being well supported in Debian. Thanks!

Scott Thatcher
--
Scott Thatcher
Assistant Professor of Mathematics
Truman State University
<email address hidden>

I recently stepped into that xfig/transfig trap, wondering why I was not
able to export eps. Most people I know use xfig to export eps and pdf.
Thus I would consider the eps export function to be one of the core
functionalities of xfig. If a core functionality of a program depends on
another package then this should be reflected by its package
dependencies. Everything else is bad practice in my opinion. Even if
there "may be situations where you only want to draw a picture but do
not want to export it to something different to the FIG format". Please
switch the xfig package to depend on transfig.

BR
Hagen

tags 254803 + wontfix
severity 273208 normal
tags 273208 + wontfix
merge 254803 273208
thanks

As written in the bug reports I still think that "Recommends:
transfig" is enough, because xfig also runs without this program
(there are other programs that can work with FIG format, too, so xfig
doesn't depend on transfig).