[2027] in athena10
Re: [Debathena] #131: dvips uses a4 paper
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jonathan Reed)
Fri Apr 3 19:17:50 2009
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 19:17:31 -0400 (EDT)
From: Jonathan Reed <jdreed@MIT.EDU>
To: Debathena Trac <debathena@mit.edu>
cc: jhawk@mit.edu, broder@mit.edu, geofft@mit.edu
In-Reply-To: <051.df23c09e283b42e47e7502077c120334@mit.edu>
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.0904031906240.20445@infinite-loop.mit.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
> Ok. debathena-cluster now depends on debathena-tex-config, which should
> re-configure pdftex, dvips, and a few other utilities to generate letter
> documents by default. (change uploaded to -proposed)
>
> I still think that this is a package that wants to be in -standard or
> -clients, but I'm out of energy to fight for it.
I also think this should go into -clients ideally, since that's where most
of the other debathena-foo-config clients are, most importantly the lprng
and cups configuration. If you're printing to the cluster printers, you
(and everyone else trying to use that printer) will be very sad if you
submit A4 jobs, since the printer will just sit there and complain. We
can debate ad nauseum whether or not the printers _should_ do this, but
the fact is, they do. We already get a bunch of A4 jobs at the beginning
of each semester when the international students show up. If every
Debathena user starts printing A4 jobs, it's going to be extremely
annoying for Support and Ops.
There seems to be some thought that the -clients metapackage contains some
sort of implied "Touch my machine as little as possible" contract with its
users. If that's the intention of the developers, we should document that
or something.
Ideally, this situation would be resolved by one of the following:
- It goes in -clients, and people who really really really want A4 paper
can issue some sort of aptitude command to remove it and prevent it from
being reinstalled? (Is this possible with Recommends or Suggests or
something?)
- It goes in -standard. People who choose to run -clients are probably
clever enough to figure out why their documents keep stalling on the
printers.
-Jon
