			 apt-watch 0.3.2 README
		 Daniel Burrows <dburrows@debian.org>

0) What is it?

This is a applet (presently only for Gnome) to watch for updates to
packages on your system.

1) What good is it?

This applet is meant primarily for users of stable Debian releases, so they
can be informed when important upgrades to their system are available.  It
takes the place of running "apt-get update" periodically to check for new
packages.  It will pay particular attention to packages on security.debian.org.

2) The version number looks low.  Is this program safe to use?

While no program is bug-free, I certainly believe that apt-watch is
usable on a day-to-day basis.  The low version number is more due to
missing features than to instability in the present version.

See TODO for a list of features to be added before 1.0.

3) Why did you write a Gnome applet and not use the notification-area?

As far as I know, the notification area doesn't support the stuff that the
panel does automatically, such as having multiple instances of the program
that don't step on each other's configuration, starting the program
automatically on login, and so on.

4) Why isn't there a KDE applet?

Because I don't use KDE and I haven't had the time or motivation to
write one.  In theory, it should be easier to write a KDE applet, but
the Gnome applet was unpleasant enough for me right now.
Contributions are welcome, of course.

5) Why isn't there an X=(xfce/Notification Area/NeXTStep/Amiga/etc) frontend?

4[KDE/X]
