flash plugin in 6.0 / realplayer & fontconfig

[Michael C. Shultz]

On Monday 19 December 2005 18:41, Rob wrote:
> On Mon, 19 Dec 2005 17:12:07 -0900
>
> Beecher Rintoul <akbeech at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Monday 19 December 2005 07:41 am, dick hoogendijk wrote:
> > > On 18 Dec Beecher Rintoul wrote:
> > > > On Sunday 18 December 2005 10:16 pm, Dev Tugnait wrote:
> > > > > On Mon, 2005-12-19 at 01:06 -0500, James Bailie wrote:
> > > > > > Dev Tugnait wrote:
> > > > > >  > The port is not broken cvsup your tree
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Yes it is.  While some things work, it still does not create the
> > > > > > proper symbolic link for the acrobat plugin, nor is the path
> > > > > > for it correct in the sample libmap.confs.  Beecher's fix will
> > > > > > correct.
> > > > >
> > > > > The only thing it doesnt do is create symbolic links which does not
> > > > > mark a port as BROKEN for one, secondly why would you remove your
> > > > > browser_plugins dir?
> > > >
> > > > That was a typo, read the followup I sent immediately following the
> > > > first message. Secondly putting plugins in browser_linux_plugins does
> > > > break firefox and mozilla. I would call that broken where I come
> > > > from. Users should not have to move things that were installed in the
> > > > wrong place. That's the job of the port.
> > >
> > > You were very quick with your correction of the typo. Faster than some
> > > of us read their mails ;-)
> > > Secondly, I totally agree to the statement that the port is "broken"
> > > You have too much to manually correct.
> > > At the time I was not aware of the facts and lost quite some time
> > > finding out. If you know, it's not that kind of a deal.
> >
> > Even though I'm not a programmer, I'm looking into fixing that port. I've
> > tried contacting the maintainer and didn't get any response. If I manage
> > to get it working I'll file a PR. The linuxpluginwrapper has been broken
> > since the last upgrade, acroread way before that and it took me many
> > hours to find all the fixes necessary (thank you everyone who helped me
> > with that issue). If nothing else, I'll write all those changes into a
> > script which will do it automatically. I would think this would be a
> > priority if FreeBSD is going to be a viable desktop alternative. It's
> > exactly this kind of situation that causes new users to give up and go
> > with the penguin, or worse go back to micro$oft. I can't even tell
> > someone to read the documentation, because there isn't any. These fixes
> > were scattered throughout many email threads that span many months.
> >
> > If anyone needs a copy of my work-around it can be found at:
> >
> > http://akparadise.byethost33.com/freebsd/linuxpluginwrapper_how_to.txt
> >
> > Just my .02
> >
> > Beech
>
> I can sympathize about these linux program problems.  I want to be
> able to listen to Real Audio streams, but as it is now I have to boot
> into Windows to do it.
>
> The linux-realplayer won't start because it can't find any fonts and
> it tells me to fix fontconfig.  I never had problems with fonts before
> fontconfig came into being.  I really have no idea why it exists.
>
> Moreover, I have no interest in learning XML, then cutting and pasting
> various config files together out of what little documentation exists
> for fontconfig.  The documentation is so poor that I have no idea what
> I am doing anyway.   Searches on Google and the mailing lists were no
> help either.
>
> It is very frustrating.  I concur that some of these programs are just
> not desktop ready.  At this rate I am never going to be able to get rid
> of XP on my laptop.
>
> Rob.

If desktop users only donated a quarter of what they pay for XP to open source 
projects I'm sure priorities would change drastically.  As it is we get way 
more than we pay for.

-Mike