Description of problem: The xbiff, xeyes, xditview, and xmessage programs have been erroneously removed from the xorg-x11-tools package. The comment in the xorg-x11.spec file for this read: * Sun Aug 22 2004 Mike A. Harris <mharris> 6.7.99.902-6 - Remove a bunch of legacy Xaw/Xt applications which really should not be part of X11 sources (xbiff,xditview,xeyes,xmessage) These programs should NOT have been removed from the xorg-x11-tools package unless they were to be added to another package. This removal of these programs has completely eliminated them from the system, which is wrong. Maybe not many people use these programs, but I do, and I see no reason for them to have been removed. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Install xorg-x11-tools, note that xbiff, xeyes, etc are missing from the install even though the Description of the xorg-x11-tools package partially reads: "Various tools for X, including listres, xbiff, xeyes, xcalc, and xload among others." Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install xorg-x11-tools 2. 3. Actual results: No xbiff program installed. Expected results: xbiff program installed. Additional info: All that needs to happen is that the commenting out of some lines of the xorg-x11.spec file (search for "xbiff" or "xeyes" to see what I mean) needs to be undone, and the commands to remove these files from the build before packaging needs to be removed.
mharris: once Extras is sorted, is there interest to move xbiff/xeyes into an Extras package from you? Or maybe a 3rd party maintainer? Thanks
Yes, certainly. I'd like to be able to get xbiff as part of a package. As far as I know, there isn't another program available in Fedora that serves the same function. (watch a file for changes, notify the user via an X program). If such a program is already available then it would make sense to mention it in the release notes near the word xbiff.
I normally run 3-5 xbiffs for various email boxes on my systems. It's a real pain to have to activate a shell to check mail on each of them now
Use the gnome panel applet for checking multiple mailboxes. There are several calculator applications in the distribution which can be used in place of xcalc. Other apps noted above have similar replacements in the distribution as well. In the future, when X.Org X11 is modularized for X11R7, some of these applications will either be removed from X.Org upstream completely, or will be maintained as separate software outside of X.Org major release, which is really where they belong all along, as they don't really have much to do with the operation of the X Window System itself. The Fedora Project gladly welcomes any volunteers in the community who would like to maintain rpms of xeyes/xbiff, etc. in Fedora Extras in the future. There are no plans of adding these removed applications back to the Fedora Core however. Setting status to "WONTFIX".
Additionally.. there is a gnome panel applet to replace xeyes I just discovered. For those who use xeyes to locate their mouse pointer, they can use the gnome panel applet, or they can use the GNOME accessiblity features to increase the size of the mouse pointer. There is a feature that can highlight the mouse pointer by pressing CTRL or something as well. Hope this helps.
As a final comment, I find it disappointing that no good reason was ever given for removing these programs, other that you just don't like them to be in there, despite the fact that they've been in the base X distribution for what, 20 years now? And that the few people who really do want these programs have been ignored, despite the only thing needing to be done to fix this problem is to remove a few characters from the SPEC file. It just seems like such an *easy* problem to solve - simply put them back until there is a real plan for moving them elsewhere. After all, the X distribution includes these programs, why does RedHat see the need to decide that something that is included in the X distribution should not be included with their packaging of the X distribution? I will investigate making my own RPM for these programs. I don't know much about RPM, and I'm worried that it will be difficult to do since these programs are a part of the X distribution's build process and source code and making a completely separate RPM for them might be difficult.
I've got to say removing a basic (& tiny) program like xbiff that people have been using for years quite sucks. One more push away from redhat for me. At least our servers run debian so I can run xbiff remotely.
I too am disappointed by the removal without what appears to be a real need. The statement that there are "other replacements" can very well be taken to an exterme by replacing Linux by another operating system. Not that I am going to do it, but this is a really weak reason. Removing xbiff from the core X because it does not belong to the "X Window System" itself suggests removing many other applications as well. Besides, the replacements suggested by so far just do *not* do what xbiff did: monitor _file changes_ (any file!) in a standalone application. I do not see any way to do exactly this with the Gnome applet. Besides, I do not use neither Gnome nor KDE any longer.
*** Bug 173893 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***