Re: Octave MESSAGE

[Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost>]

Jason Bacon <outpaddling%yahoo.com@localhost> writes:

> I'd like to suggest the following for math/octave:
>
> Index: MESSAGE
> ===================================================================
> RCS file: /cvsroot/pkgsrc/math/octave/MESSAGE,v
> retrieving revision 1.2
> diff -u -r1.2 MESSAGE
> --- MESSAGE    24 Jan 2017 12:31:18 -0000    1.2
> +++ MESSAGE    29 Mar 2019 16:11:31 -0000
> @@ -5,4 +5,8 @@
>  following line to ~/.octaverc:
>      graphics_toolkit("gnuplot");
>
> +If running remotely on a host that does not have an X11 server installed,
> +(such as HPC compute nodes) you will need to install fonts on the remote
> +host.  (Suggestion: meta-pkgs/modular-xorg-fonts)
> +

I generally am opposed to the notion of MESSAGE.  With package managers
and dependencies, I don't think people see them, and almost all of it
should be in regular documentation in /usr/pkg/share/doc/PKGNAME or
similar.

> I support research computing and we sometimes have users run graphical
> apps remotely on headless development machines or cluster compute
> nodes.
>
> It does not make sense to install and run an X11 server on these hosts
> as they have no local display and 99% of the packages involved would
> serve no purpose.
>
> The only thing needed to run most X11 apps is xauth, which helps
> automatically set $DISPLAY to point to the user's PC.
>
> Some apps require fonts installed on the host running the X11 app, however.
>
> We had some discussion about this a while ago regarding other apps
> like emacs and gedit.
>
> We could make some fonts package a dependency for each app that needs
> them, but that gets sticky because different users will want or even
> need different font sets depending on their personal preferences or
> locale.  So, I think it's better to just educate the end user and let
> them install the fonts they want separately.

I don't see this as about octave, or any particular package like that,
but more broadly about the notion of setting up a server that is
intended to display on remote systems.   But I see where you are coming
from that only a few X programs behave this way.

If the font dependency could be added in such a way that it isn't vast,
some normal font is picked, and it is satisfied by native X11 when
native is selected, then that seems like a good approach.