[ On Monday, September 29, 2003 at 14:40:55 (+0200), Alistair Crooks wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: pkg/18687: update textproc/lout to 3.26 and fix default papersize configuration
>
> > Hmmm....  that "nudge" took so damn long to touch anyone that by the
> > time you did the update the original package was already up to 3.29.
> > Nearly a whole year has passed since I submitted this PR.
> 
> You're welcome.

What do I have to say "thanks" for?  I'm already way past you and other
pkgsrc maintainers (and its users) as I have been using 3.29, via my
local pkgsrc, pretty much since it came out.  I only offered my changes
to help some pkgsrc maintainer, yourself for example, or even some other
pkgsrc user, save some time when they finally got around to updating the
module so that _others_ could benefit from it.  Given the delay of
nearly a year and the fact that the result is a package still just as
stale, or maybe even more-so, as it was when I submitted this PR in the
first place, I have even less to be thankful for.  Indeed I feel very
much as though my effort in submitting the PR was totally wasted and
that all I've done for other NetBSD users is help maintain the
perception that NetBSD's pkgsrc is forever on the trailing edge.

You're the one who should be thanking me, at least in some small way,
not the other way around.  The only thing I've been lame about is not
updating this PR when I updated my local pkgsrc, though given the way
these things obviously go I'm far more inclined to wait for someone to
ask if I've done any more since than I am to waste more of my time if
it's just going to sit languishing until I update it yet again, maybe
twice more, before it finally makes it into the official pkgsrc.

I.e. pkgsrc maintainers such as yourself must remember that you are
working as a _team_ with those third party developers who supply
assistance.  You've way over-stepped the line of offering technical
criticism of my free offerings.  Why should I continue to help you if
(a) you ignore my help for so long, and then (b) when you finally do
make use of it you fail to check to see if maybe your own effort isn't
going to be wasted by creating a new package that's already way out of
date?  I.e. what's the point here?  Are we not both trying to give
NetBSD users easy access to the most useful and most up-to-date
third-party packages available?  I fully realize there's a serious lack
of available volunteer effort to do the work, but you must realize that
the same scarcity affects almost all third-party developers as well.

After all you had only to check to see if there was a newer release of
lout available, and then think to ask me if maybe I didn't already have
a newer pkgsrc module available as well.

(Note that as a maintainer of other third party packages I've taken to
moving or removing some of my out-of-date releases specifically to
prevent folks such as yourself from publishing "packages" based on
out-of-date releases.)

> Well, I wrote the papersize package, and added it to pkgsrc; I wasn't
> aware that you had something to do with it, but I'll go back and
> check.

Perhaps you should discuss these issues of print/papersize vs. PAPERSIZE
with those of your compatriots who are still doing things differently
than you seem to think they should be doing in pkgsrc before you go
knocking off advice and suggestions coming from a third-party developer
such as myself.  I.e. don't make me a part of your fight over this
issue, if that's what it is, with other pkgsrc maintainers.  I made what
I believe was the best technical choice amongst the options currently
being offered in pkgsrc for dealing with this kind of problem in the
environment presented by a package such as lout.

I'm not saying anything at all about the print/papersize package itself.
Indeed until you brought it up I was more or less completely ignoring
it.  I'm simply pointing out that in my environment the existing
PAPERSIZE mechanism is sufficient and I for one will never install or
run setpapersize.  I'm also pointing out that I'm obviously not alone in
finding PAPERSIZE sufficient and worth supporting in lout.  That doesn't
mean print/papersize bad or useless, or that it shouldn't also support
lout -- just that I don't need it, especially not when I can use
PAPERSIZE to choose my site-wide defaults.  If you can convince everyone
else to give up PAPERSIZE then I'll revisit this issue as well, but in
the mean time it's the best, available, solution for me and for lout in
general.

> Thanks for your comments, Greg.

If I didn't think you were being sarcastic then I'd say "You're welcome!".

-- 
						Greg A. Woods

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