Re: Debian menus policy

[Craig Dickson <crdic@yahoo.com>]

Thomas Hood wrote:

> What is most important in a menu is function.  It should
> still be possible for a program to be put under multiple
> submenus, but only if it were a multi-purpose program.
> 
> Instead of:           I suggest:
> Apps                  
>    Editors            Editing
>    Text                  Text
>    Graphics              Graphics
>    Sound                 Sound
>    Programming           Programs
>    Viewers            Viewing
>    Sound              Playing
>    Math               Calculating
>    Emulators          Turing
>                          Emulators
>                          Interpreters
>    Shells                Shells
>    Tools              Configuring
>    System                System
>    Net                   Network
>                       Communicating
> Games                 Gaming
> XShells

I don't like changing the top-level menu names from nouns to verbs. It
doesn't really change the meaning; that something is an editor means
exactly the same thing as saying that it is used for editing, so the
change is basically meaningless, and I find it aesthetically unpleasing.
(And what, by the way, is the verb "to Turing"? :-))

I also very strongly disagree that the verb (editing, viewing, etc.) is
more fundamental than the subject (text, sound, image). I prefer to have
everything related to a certain subject or medium presented in one
place, e.g. all sound recorders (sndrec), editors (glade), converters
(sox), and players (xmms) together. It makes no sense to me to suggest
that a sound editor is more closely related to a text editor than to a
sound player, which is what you imply by putting all the editing tools
under a common top-level menu regardless of what kind of data they edit.

There are problems with Debian's current menus, but they are mostly
related to sloppy categorizing and overlapping categories. To take the
examples in your left column above, I would like to get rid of the
"Viewers" and "Editors" menus, moving their contents to "Text",
"Graphics", or "Sound" as appropriate (these can have sub-menus for
"Editors", "Viewers", etc. if such subcategories seem helpful). I would
also like to have some new categories defined for most of the things in
the "Tools" menu, which right now is just a meaningless dumping ground
for everything that doesn't fit into any other category.

So, to present this in a nice table like yours, here's what I'd like to
see as a menu structure.

  Apps
    Graphics
      Editors
      Renderers      (for programs that generate images, e.g. povray)
      Scanners       (for scanning software that does not also edit)
      Viewers
      Misc           (tools related to graphics, such as 3D modelers that
                      just create input for renderers)
    Sound
      Editors
      Players
      Recorders
      Misc
    Text
      Editors
      Viewers
      Misc
    Document         (for documents that aren't simple text or graphics)
      Word Processors
      Desktop Publishers
      Spreadsheets
      Misc
    Programming
      App Generators
      Debuggers
      IDEs
      Misc
    Network
      Clients        (ftp, telnet, web browser, etc.)
      Configuration  
      Diagnostics    (e.g. traceroute)
      Misc
    System
      Configuration
      Status
      Misc
    X Shells
    Games
      Adventure
      Arcade
      Board
      (etc. more or less as the current Debian menus are)

This is not a perfect scheme either, but no scheme will ever be perfect.
I think it's an improvement over what we have now, and I much prefer it
to Thomas Hood's suggestion.

Craig