I would have tried if I had known this. I went to www.suse.com to find these RPMs, did a search on them yielding no information on how to obtain them. Disappointed.
You were just unlucky enough not to click on the Downloads link on the home page, which would have taken you here :- http://www.suse.com/us/private/download/ftp/int_mirrors.html It is normal for web search engines to skip ftp sites. If you are in Washington State you should find mirrors on the west coast that are faster than ftp.suse.com thoug I am surprised that google didn't show you the rpms.
I would agree with you here, but as I stated I'm not a Developer - i.e. I don't want to program, I just want to use the tools that are available. Unfortunately, this often times means needing to compile packages from source.
I never read the box notes on Personal - I am sorry you learned the hard way the difference between 'using' and 'recompiling'. I suppose that to put the source dependencies (the devel packages) on the CDs would mean sacrificing space for some packages used by workstation users. As you guessed, really the free software tradition is to offer you *all* the source code that is compiled into your binaries, including the header files. Unfortunately in your case SuSE satisfy this by putting some of it on the ftp mirrors. If you ask around, I bet that fewer Personal Edition users than you think plan to recompile the packages. You have now also learned the hard way that the unix tradition is that 'development tools' are not only used by programmers but by other 'professionals' such as system administrators and power users. However I hope you are having more fun now you are tweaking the sources, and you now have the experience to choose something that meets your needs in your next free software distribution. 9.0 should be out in the autumn!