[NTLUG:Discuss] Ximian™

[Richard Cobbe]

Lo, on , December 12, Rev. wRy did write:

> On Wed, 2001-12-12 at 10:50, Richard Cobbe wrote:
> 
> > Actually, I have the dual problem: since the upstream maintainer of
> > libgtkhtml changes the soname pretty frequently, I've ended up with
> > about five copies of that library installed, and only two of them
> > were actually in use.  Some quick work with dselect took care of
> > that, though.
> 
> This is my problem as well.  I have 

<sorted list>

> /usr/lib/libgtkhtml.so.15
> /usr/lib/libgtkhtml.so.15.0.0
> /usr/lib/libgtkhtml.so.17
> /usr/lib/libgtkhtml.so.17.0.0
> /usr/lib/libgtkhtml.so.18
> /usr/lib/libgtkhtml.so.18.0.0
> /usr/lib/libgtkhtml.so.19
> /usr/lib/libgtkhtml.so.19.0.1
> /usr/lib/libgtkhtml.so.20
> /usr/lib/libgtkhtml.so.20.0.0

> and no idea which ones are safe to get rid of.

libgtkhtml.so.xx is almost certainly a symlink to
libgtkhtml.so.xx.yy.zz; this is part of the normal Unix shared library
mechanism.  (The exact details are beside the point, but I'd be happy to
explain them if anyone's interested.)  In any case, the packages which
contain these libraries should handle the symlinks correctly.

Assuming that your package system gets all of the dependencies right
(and both dpkg & rpm are fairly good about handling shared libraries
correctly), then it's pretty easy to figure out which ones you can
trash.  Just figure out which package contains these files (rpm -qf or
dpkg -S) and try removing the packages.  If a removal fails because of a
dependency, the library's still in use, so leave it around.

Be aware, though, that this won't take into account any GNOME binaries
that you installed manually, rather than through a package system.  If
you've got any of those binaries hanging around, then you'll want to run
ldd on them.  This will print out a list of (most of) the shared
libraries that the program uses; if any one of the libraries you've
listed above is in the list, don't delete it.

(Unfortunately, even *that*'s not complete: ldd won't catch any
libraries loaded dynamically---e.g., at run-time, through dlopen(3).  No
good way to figure out which libraries are necessary here, short of
looking through the source code.)

> > Never tried Evolution: I'm too used to the Emacs keybindings to ever
> > want to use another mailer.
> 
> From the Compose window, do:
> 
> Edit->Properties
> 
> 	Select the "Keyboard Shortcuts" tab
> 
> 	Set the Shortcuts Type field to "Emacs like"

Hm.  Emacs-*like*.  I've been bitten, far too many times, by keybindings
that are similar to those in Emacs but not quite the same.  My two most
annoying examples:

* In Emacs, C-k deletes all text from point (= the cursor) to the end of
  the line.  In Pine, it deletes the entire line.

* This is the really annoying one.  In Emacs, M-q refills the current
  paragraph: it's extremely useful when you're replying to someone who
  hasn't quite figured out that whole wrap-lines-at-72-characters-please
  bit, or when you're trying to rejustify after the attribution headers
  have pushed the text out past 80 columns.

  In Netscape, Alt-q quits.  With no confirmation message.  >:-(

I'll stick with VM for now, thanks.  It runs entirely within Emacs, so I
don't have to worry about these sorts of problems.  (Plus, it means I
can load only one really-big-and-overblown program for both editing and
email, instead of one for editing and another for email!  <grin>)

Richard