Fast text display?

[Paul Rubin]

Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org> writes:
> > OK.  But I found on RH9 and FC3, as well as on Windows, that tcl/tk
> > was preinstalled (or included with Python).  I didn't find wxwidgets
> > preinstalled on any of those systems.
> 
> I think posts are getting crossed here. The python sources you get
> from www.python.org don't include tcl or tk, which is how the poster I
> was replying to specified things.

Here's what I believe the situation is:
  RH9: tcl/tk preinstalled, tkinter included with python.  Once I
    install RH9, I can use Python, tkinter, and tcl/tk without
    downloading anything additional.
  FC3: same as RH9
  Windows: tcl and tk and tkinter all included in python.msi.  Once I
    install Python, I can use tkinter/tcl/tk without installing anything
    additional.

> > What about wxwidgets, which wxpython requires?  
> 
> If the package needs something and it's not installed, the package
> system will get it and install it. That's the *point* of a package
> system.

Not really.  A package system turns a software distro into a single
file you can install.  In some instances a package depends other
packages and some package managers can then go chase down the
dependencies, but that's not characteristic of packages per se, and
while it's better than nothing, it's best to avoid it since the mechanism
breaks a lot.  Tcl/tk is a boneheaded system in many ways, but it's
been very successful partly through the strategy of avoiding installation
hassle by minimizing dependencies.

> The package system can be configured in a number of different ways. My
> configuration - with a broadband network connection - is to check the
> local disk cache, then download anything that's missing. You can
> preload the disk cache by doing "make fetch-recursive" if you
> want. You can preload the cache by hand if you want, but the package
> system is very picky about the version numbers of things it's trying
> to build, so that'd be a pain.

Best is to have just one package that doesn't depend on any other
packages and doesn't need any further downloads, so once you've
installed it, you're done.