Hi! On 3/25/06, Thijs Kinkhorst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Fri, 2006-03-24 at 18:20 -0300, Nelson A. de Oliveira wrote: > > I still don't see good reasons to merge the 4 programs :-/ > > It's of course always a tradeoff between the extra work of merging > things and the possible benefits. I can see two major benefits:
Extra work for me is not the problem. I was thinking about the extra work that the upstream authors will have. > If you can convince upstream to join forces and integrate the work into > one tool, this is an improvement for the quality of the code. In my > opinion this is the best way to go: there's only one copy of the > infrastructure (reading files, user interaction, error handling and > recovery...) with more eyes on it, and only the algorithms differ. This > should improve the quality of the general program. I can try to do this. I will contact the authors. > Another major benefit is for the user: they want a program to 'crush' > pngs. Speaking for myself, when I was looking for a program to do that > task, I wouln't want to install four different Debian packages and > evaluate them. Each of the programs would probably have different > options and a different modus operandi. I would want to install just one > package with either four programs I can try, or better, one program that > has a switch for the algorithm to use. It has the additional benefit of > having one Debian package to maintain. Sure. > I can't imagine that the size overhead would be that big to be > significant. If you can convince upstream to go along, you would satisfy > both benefits, but if you don't, I still think the second benefit is > worthwhile enough to implement it. Just in the case that none of the 4 authors want to merge the programs. We will create one Debian package, containing the 4 programs, with a wrapper (a "pngoptimizer", for example), that will select one of the programs, based on the options that the user selected? Best regards, Nelson
