Why would you go and do a thing like this ?

[rgr sdf lonestar org (Rob Ristroph)]

Hi,

        I was recently appalled to view the number of libraries that
        gnumeric links.  Do you guys have any excuse or explanation
        for this travesty ?

        I am particularly shocked at the moment because I had a nice,
        clean slackware linux machine an hour ago, with X and fvwm and
        mozilla and few applications and midnight commander all
        residing in a few hundred megabytes.  I went to put a spread
        sheet on there and I feel like someone dumped a truck load of
        AOL cds all over my freshly cut lawn.

        In particular, I am interested to know why gnumeric requires
        the use of libesd.so and libaudiofile.so, especially as my
        computer has no sound card.  I also wouldn't mind knowing what
        required the use of libresolv.so and libnsl.so, as I would
        rather the program with my data in it did not contact the
        internet.

        If this were a Microsoft product I would presume that
        Microsoft was trying to bundle the spreadsheet with the sound
        library in order to foist some broken sound format upon the
        world, and the libresolv was necessary to send to Redmond what
        it snooped from my harddrive.

        I think you guys have some fine code in gnumeric.  I would
        rather it not be mixed with all that other crap.  I feel like
        an art lover discovering someone stapling a calender girl
        pinup over the Mona Lisa.

        Do you guys have any excuse for this ?

        Why don't you make gnumeric at least run without the
        libraries, and only load them with dl() when you actually need
        to play a sound and visit a web site, and make the software be
        politely and functionally silent if it doesn't find them ?

--Rob

P.S.  In case you haven't looked:

[~] ldd /usr/bin/gnumeric 
        libglade-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libglade-2.0.so.0 (0x4002a000)
        libgnomeprintui-2-2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgnomeprintui-2-2.so.0 (0x40040000)
        libgnomeprint-2-2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgnomeprint-2-2.so.0 (0x40073000)
        libgnomeui-2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgnomeui-2.so.0 (0x400cf000)
        libSM.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libSM.so.6 (0x4016b000)
        libICE.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libICE.so.6 (0x40174000)
        libbonoboui-2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libbonoboui-2.so.0 (0x4018b000)
        libgnomecanvas-2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgnomecanvas-2.so.0 (0x401ea000)
        libgnome-2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgnome-2.so.0 (0x40214000)
        libart_lgpl_2.so.2 => /usr/lib/libart_lgpl_2.so.2 (0x40229000)
        libpangoft2-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpangoft2-1.0.so.0 (0x40240000)
        libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 (0x40266000)
        libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0 (0x40549000)
        libatk-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libatk-1.0.so.0 (0x405c8000)
        libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0 (0x405e4000)
        libpangoxft-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpangoxft-1.0.so.0 (0x405fa000)
        libpangox-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpangox-1.0.so.0 (0x40602000)
        libpango-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpango-1.0.so.0 (0x4060d000)
        libgnomevfs-2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgnomevfs-2.so.0 (0x40646000)
        libbonobo-2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libbonobo-2.so.0 (0x406a7000)
        libgconf-2.so.4 => /usr/lib/libgconf-2.so.4 (0x40700000)
        libbonobo-activation.so.4 => /usr/lib/libbonobo-activation.so.4 (0x40733000)
        libORBit-2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libORBit-2.so.0 (0x40749000)
        libgmodule-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgmodule-2.0.so.0 (0x4079f000)
        libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x407a3000)
        libgthread-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgthread-2.0.so.0 (0x407a6000)
        libgsf-gnome-1.so.1 => /usr/lib/libgsf-gnome-1.so.1 (0x407ab000)
        libgsf-1.so.1 => /usr/lib/libgsf-1.so.1 (0x407b0000)
        libgobject-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgobject-2.0.so.0 (0x407da000)
        libxml2.so.2 => /usr/lib/libxml2.so.2 (0x4080e000)
        libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x40915000)
        libz.so.1 => /usr/lib/libz.so.1 (0x40966000)
        libglib-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libglib-2.0.so.0 (0x40978000)
        libpopt.so.0 => /lib/libpopt.so.0 (0x409f8000)
        libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x40a01000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x40a23000)
        libfontconfig.so.1 => /usr/lib/libfontconfig.so.1 (0x40b56000)
        libfreetype.so.6 => /usr/lib/libfreetype.so.6 (0x40b85000)
        libgnome-keyring.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgnome-keyring.so.0 (0x40bf2000)
        libjpeg.so.62 => /usr/lib/libjpeg.so.62 (0x40bfe000)
        libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x40c1c000)
        libesd.so.0 => /usr/lib/libesd.so.0 (0x40ce3000)
        libaudiofile.so.0 => /usr/lib/libaudiofile.so.0 (0x40ceb000)
        libXrandr.so.2 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXrandr.so.2 (0x40d10000)
        libXi.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXi.so.6 (0x40d14000)
        libXext.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXext.so.6 (0x40d1c000)
        libXft.so.2 => /usr/lib/libXft.so.2 (0x40d2a000)
        libXcursor.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXcursor.so.1 (0x40d3d000)
        libXrender.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXrender.so.1 (0x40d46000)
        libgnutls.so.11 => /usr/lib/libgnutls.so.11 (0x40d4f000)
        libresolv.so.2 => /lib/libresolv.so.2 (0x40db6000)
        librt.so.1 => /lib/librt.so.1 (0x40dc8000)
        libORBitCosNaming-2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libORBitCosNaming-2.so.0 (0x40ddb000)
        /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)
        libbz2.so.1.0 => /usr/lib/libbz2.so.1.0 (0x40de1000)
        libexpat.so.1 => /usr/lib/libexpat.so.1 (0x40df0000)
        libgcrypt.so.11 => /usr/lib/libgcrypt.so.11 (0x40e20000)
        libgpg-error.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgpg-error.so.0 (0x40e6d000)
        libnsl.so.1 => /lib/libnsl.so.1 (0x40e72000)
        libtasn1.so.2 => /usr/lib/libtasn1.so.2 (0x40e10000)