[Live-demo] Re: Prune in the OSGeoLive DVD?

[Hamish]

activityworkshop:
>   I wonder if you would perhaps be interested in including the "Prune"
> application in some future release?

looks good to me, I support it.
do you fall under OSM's umbrella, or are you an independent project?

Cameron:
> I'm wary of the OSGeo-Live disk promoting every possible
> application, as it will just confuse new users.
> We do have similar applications packaged for other domains,
> but it is useful if we can recommend the best of breed.

I'm not so worried about that- as long as we have a (better) menu hierarchy
in place. I mean we already have $x apps which act as a map server or
read/write geotiff, shapefile, gpx format. And that's a good thing!

more importantly, I don't want to and don't think we should be trying to
make that decision for the user if the competing projects are more or less
in the same league. Set a standard, present the options, and let the user
decide what fits their needs.

e.g. should we pick and only ship 1 map server? hell no.
that is not to say that we shouldn't have our standards though.

activityworkshop:
> It's written in Java, runs on Win/Mac/Linux, is GPL'd
> and already included in Debian (from Squeeze onwards) and
> Ubuntu (from Meerkat onwards).  So I'm guessing that it
> wouldn't be too difficult to include on the DVD,

You already sort of answered this but does it require sun's java, or is
if happy with openjdk? (is that experience imperfect?) I am a bit concerned
that eventually we will have to move to openjdk if the legal winds change
any more than they already have, and it is best to be ready.

Are packages for lucid available from an ubuntu launchpad ppa? (if not
you can probably submit them to UbuntuGIS's one) or as a simple .deb
download?

Cameron:
> (We are reaching capacity on the DVD disk)

not a bad question to ask, but fyi I've just cleared out 600mb.

activityworkshop:
> It also plays nicely with gpsbabel, gnuplot and exiftool, but doesn't
> require them.

gpsbabel and gnuplot are already installed, exiftool is not AFAIK but
would be simple to add.

activityworkshop:
> Ok, so those requirements sound perhaps a little too demanding for Prune
> at the moment.

those are not hard requirements, but they certainly help. Most OSM tools
would not meet them right now, although most OSGeo tools do. The challenge
Cameron is describing (if I may paraphrase) is to get as many great apps on
the livedvd as possible without diluting to the quality. And as far as
first impressions go it only takes one ill placed bug in one app to smear
the impression of everything else. So it pays to be a bit cautious.


anyway perhaps most importantly I am happy for the upstream involvement and
interest. A lot flows from that.


regards,
Hamish