On Thu, 23 Sep 1999, Peter S Galbraith wrote: > I agree with you, and wish we'd toss all non-relevant packages > out, or at least move them into the data section. > (That said, I think stuff like coastline data that we could use > to make maps would be okay for the data section; Where do I draw > the line? Well, can you at least compute the stuff? Or simply > read it?) >
Geographic data would be OK if there's a program packaged that could draw maps (is this formatting?) or tell the shortest distance from some point to the coast or read GPS data from a serial line and show you where you are etc. Otherwise I'd say there are specialized research servers on the net for astronomic, genetic, geographic, statistic and the like data (although I'm personally very interested in some of these). Formal requirements tend to produce a lot of borderline cases, but a little bit of common sense is usually enough to solve them. The difference between a real distribution and a 10 CD roast from ftp.*.edu is that somebody has taken care of the configuration, integration and proper interaction of the components. Dumping 3 MB of do-with-it-what-you-want into the FHiloSophically right place of the file system doesn't require that. Yours, Bj"orn Brill <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Frankfurt am Main, Germany
