On 14-May-00, 13:56 (CDT), Chris Waters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Julian Gilbey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > But a package which Recommends: www-browser needs no standard > > interface whatsoever, for example. > > I believe they all fit this template: > > command-line: <package-specific-program-name> <url> >
But a lot of the packages that reference "www-browser" don't even require this much of an "API", they only require that the package supplying "www-browser" be able to view HTML. In other words, they never activate the browser, they just recommend that you use a browser to view output or docs or some such. That said, I don't think it's generally unreasonable for us to specify exactly what we mean when define a virtual package. Each package might have different levels of detail in the specification. As far as virtual-packages vs alternatives go, the first is concept used deal with functional relationships in the packaging system, while the latter is a mechanism used to deal with duplicate file system entries. We need to be very careful about treating them as equivalents. Steve
