Bug#741573: Proposed draft of ballot to resolve menu/desktop question

[Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org>]

>>>>> "Ian" == Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:

Hi.
I'd appreciate it if you would look at the restatement at the bottom and
help me make sure I'm understanding the technical implications of the
proposal we're considering.

    >> I think I may be following what Ian's saying.

    Ian> I agree with what you say in this summary except that I would
    Ian> go further:

    >> If we adopt Keith's proposal without updating policy 9.6--we
    >> retainIs the SHOULD have menu entries for all command line apps,
    >> but move the metadata format to .desktop, we have a number of
    >> problems.  We have no way to express the category information and
    >> some of the other metadata from the trad menu that's kind of
    >> important for its expanded scope.
    >> 
    >> So, it's not clear what should happen.

    Ian> The dominant interpretation of this proposal is that that this
    Ian> information should simply be removed from Debian.

That doesn't make sense to me.
Without an update to section 9.6, we're saying that we agree with the
trad menu's scope, but want the data represented in .desktop files.

I personally think that would be bad technically, but I don't see how
you get from that to "delete".  You might get quickly to "the TC is
spewing nonsense because a bunch of interface work needs to be done to
make what they've asked us to do possible."
However I consider that different from "delete"

    >> In effect by adopting Keith's proposal with an update to 9.6,
    >> we're saying that as a matter of technical policy decided by the
    >> TC, there are some menu entries on the trad menu that do not
    >> belong on any menu at all.

    Ian> Worse than that, the TC would be saying that - the trad menu
    Ian> metadata database - currently in Debian [1] - which people have
    Ian> been working on for many years - and want to keep working on
    Ian> should be deleted.

I don't think so.
I think we'd be saying that people should evaluate each trad menu entry
against the newly revised 9.6 and if the package maintainer believed the
information  was worth keeping then it should be converted to .desktop.

I don't think you'd be happy with that result, but I think that is what
we'd be saying with Keith's draft including the section 9.6 update.

Some information would be deleted; we'd be updating the scope.
However other information would be converted.

I'm not trying to argue emotional loading here.  I honestly want to know
if I'm missing something here and whether more is deleted than I expect.