Why make ubuntu-desktop recommends ibus and friends?

Ma Xiaojun damage3025 at gmail.com
Mon Apr 1 17:37:06 UTC 2013


Hi, list.

According to http://packages.ubuntu.com/raring/ubuntu-desktop
ubuntu-desktop recommends ibus and friends.

I'd like to question it since:

1. The coverage of IBus stuff is limited.

Only Pinyin engine would be usable, which is merely one particular
method of inputting one particular language.
( ibus-table needs data package to make it useful. )

It won't work in Qt4 applications since ibus-qt4 won't be installed.
( IBus upstream don't provide support for other Qt versions. )

2. IBus is not a hard dependency and there are IBus alernatives.
Nothing should break in Unity if IBus is uninstalled and a custom
built version of IBus is installed.

IBus has notable alternatives like Fcitx.
Removing unnecessary dependency of IBus stuff from ubuntu-desktop can
make derivatives, e.g., UbuntuKylin life a bit easier I guess.
(disclosure: I installed UK recently but the installer somehow screwed
up and IBus is still pulled.)



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