[fim-devel] on packaging fim 0.5-rc1 for distributions

[Michele Martone]

Hi,

this is a message for those of you who package FIM for distros.

Since FIM is proliferating in options lately let me give a few
suggestions about packaging fim-0.5-rc1 with the features that
are well supported.

Namely...

I disrecommend enabling the multipage formats, so please
 --disable-poppler --disable-pdf --disable-djvu --disable-archive
because fim is not yet optimized for that --- for personal builds
it's ok.
The --enable-unicode switch is a placeholder and has no effect now.

I recommend the usual graphical formats (jpeg, png, tiff, gif, jp2,
pcx, bmp). Tiff is multipage but very ok.

After ./configure'ing you will see an asterisk (*) next to the
features that are not recommended.

I strongly recommend sticking to the defaults of ./configure, with
some exceptions.

What is new and very recommended with 0.5 is --enable-exif !
Enable SDL and aalib support: it is mature and much better than imlib.
Do not think of removing readline support: that would harm the spirit
of fim.

The converters from fancy formats are not really necessary and may tempt
into introducing huge dependencies, so maybe you want to ./configure \
 --disable-xcftopnm --disable-inkscape --disable-xfig --disable-dia \
 --disable-convert.

Consider using --enable-hardcoded-font: it introduces a default
hardcoded font, so it is not mandatory to have console fonts installed
in the system for fim, although of course possible.

If you are packaging for a distro building from sources, consider using
the new --with-font-magnifying-factor=FACTOR which hardcodes
magnification of the text font by an integer factor.
This is useful when you have a screen with a huge resolution.
Fim-0.6 (now trunk) will make such font scaling dynamically adjustable.

If you are packaging for a live distro, you will want to turn history
and configuration files support off: --disable-history --disable-fimrc .

Cheers,
Michele