Re: suggestion for educational software section
> Exactly. For most purposes, I think "education" would be the wrong
> category. If it's a science tool, then put it under "science".
> Otherwise, we would have to draw artificial distinctions, like saying
> that material for grammar schools goes under "education", but that for
> higher grades can go under "science". Or maybe the threshold should
> be between high school and college. Messy.
Once we enter the higher grades, not necesarilly limited to college, I
think educational software generally becomes more scientific. Software
that fits into the educational category should be quite obviously
educational by design, whereas most higher level grades tend to use more
scientific tools that don't need to be designed with education in mind.
So I would be comfortable drawing the line just before high school,
allowing for possible exceptions if someone manages to write a teaching
tool for higher grades, etc.
> Keywords have been suggested several times. I do not think they would
> help much. You would then have a big keyword management problem.
> Would you expect that if 'foo' is one of the official keywords, then
> *all* packages relevant to 'foo' list it as a keyword? If so, then
> every time someone wants to add a keyword, we would have to review all
> the existing programs to see which of them should also be using it.
> If not, then wouldn't it make more sense to just treat every word in
> the package description as a keyword (i.e. descriptions should be
> searchable with apt)?
Agreed, trying to apply a consistant style of keywords to thousands of
packages is only asking for trouble.
> Also: dselect will show you each package exactly once. I would really
> *not* like to see system that showed packages once for each relevant
> keyword. That would instantly triple or quadruple the time needed for
> an installation.
Perhaps when categories are drawn, there can be subcategories that
function as pointers only, rather than show a package twice. For example,
if there was an Applications > Scientific, and an Educational >
Scientific, I wouldn't mind seeing the Educational > Scientific simply
read "See: Applications > Scientific". Clicking on the line in dselect
could jump you to the Applications > Scientific section, thereby solving
the duplicate listing issue.
Matt
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