[i18n] Input Method and Fonts improvements for Gutsy

[Ming Hua]

Hi Arne,

Thanks for starting this discussion and I'm glad to see someone starting
to look at the SCIM related issues in Ubuntu.

On Fri, Aug 10, 2007 at 06:35:34PM +0800, Arne Goetje wrote:
> Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> > On Tue, Aug 07, 2007 at 01:15:23AM +0800, Arne Goetje wrote:
> >> The following packages may NOT be installed:
> >>  * scim-uim: BROKEN, will trash the SCIM setup tool. Don't install it.
> >>  * scim-chinese: old version of scim-pinyin, not compatible with the
> >> current scim package; breaks dependency handling.
> > 
> > scim-uim seems to be installed with Edubuntu only.  What is the trouble with
> > it?  Can it be fixed?  If not, should it be removed entirely?
> 
> scim-uim is not actively maintained. When this package is installed, the
> SCIM setup tool (GUI) always crashes with a segfault. Removing the
> package solves the issue.

While I agree scim-uim is not actively maintained by upstream, I would
say I take care of the packaging resaonably well, and I believe it's in
good shape right now.  There are also upstream authors willing to fix
bugs if we report them.

There are only two bugs about scim-setup crashing with scim-uim
installed that I am aware of:

One is actually an uim bug [1,2], specific to Debian/Ubuntu only
(because of a non-default configure option), and have long been fixed
since uim 1.0.0 [3].  Therefore this should have been fixed since
dapper.

1. https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/uim/+bug/5148
2. https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5182
3. http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/uim/2005-December/001429.html

Another is a simple packaging bug [4] (missing dependency), has a
one-line fix, and has been fixed in 0.1.4-2 (pre-etch).  So it should
have been fixed since feisty.  Also it should only existed for a short
time, so I am not even sure it affected edgy.

4. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=402869

As you see, neither of these two bugs are really scim-uim upstream's
fault, and both have been fixed for quite some time. Are you talking
about something different from these two?  I haven't heard any of such
crash issues lately, and I follow Debian BTS, Launchpad, as well as
upstream mailing list.

> > Likewise for scim-chinese.  We don't seem to be using it, so if it isn't
> > needed, it should probably be removed to reduce confusion.
> 
> scim-chinese is the old version of scim-pinyin. The package got renamed
> with the SCIM API change between 1.2.x and 1.4.0.

This is correct.

> scim-chinese does not
> work with the current scim version and actually conflicts with it.
> Therefor it should be removed.

If we are talking about the scim-chinese Debian/Ubuntu package, this is
simply not true.  Since scim-chinese got renamed to scim-pinyin by
upstream, Debian has been building a scim-chinese dummy binary package
which depends on scim-pinyin.

Debian's scim only conflicts with "scim-chinese (<< 0.5.0)" (and that's
only because I didn't know better about shared library packaging at the
beginning), and scim-pinyin replaces "scim-chinese (<< 0.5.0)".  So
scim-chinese package should have never caused any problem, and Debian
users have a smooth and automatic upgrade path from scim-chinese to
scim-pinyin (sarge to etch).

Ubuntu's scim-pinyin source package is significantly different from
Debian's, but a cursory check makes me believe that Ubuntu user should
also have an upgrade path from breezy to dapper.

So unless people have multiple releases in their sources.list and have
rather unconventional pinning, or use unofficial packages, scim-chinese
shouldn't break any dependency handling.  Do you have a more concrete
example?

Of course, considering that dapper already had the new renamed
scim-pinyin package, it's okay to drop scim-chinese packages if Ubuntu
wants to, and doesn't care about differentiate from Debian.  But it's
for cleaning cruft, not because it's breaking things.

Ming, Debian maintainer of scim-uim and scim-pinyin
2007.08.10