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Re: Sub-categorizing the /usr/doc directory.



Brian White writes:
 > Let's leave it the way it is.  Splitting it will only make things more
 > difficult for users.

I think this point should be fixed by a (already proposed) sort of
/usr/doc/All dir, with links into actual dirs.

 > This makes it more
 > difficult for the user to find it.  Maintainers don't chose what section
 > their package goes in -- they only recommend.  It's decided by the ftp
 > site maintainer (Guy).  Besides which, I don't remember which section
 > I got a specific package from.  Was xgalaga in X11 or games?

Here we point again at something I already talked about some time ago:
we have difficulty remembering if eg. xgalaga is in X11 or games,
because 'X11' and 'games' are basically *different types* of
classification.

A solution could be to categorize packages according to several
*concurent* classifications:

Interface: X11, console, tty, stdio
Category: Games/Strategy, Apps/Editor, Devel/Compilers, etc.


Note that it will be more difficult to classify that in a classical
directory hierarchy. I already thought about an "extension" of th
econcept of directory (allowing to "partition" a directory according
to several partitionning schemes, to have eg. .../xgalaga,
.../X11/xgalaga, .../games/xgalaga, .../X11/games/xgalaga,
.../games/X11/xgalaga point to the same file, as well as .../X11 and
.../Interfaces/X11), but I don't come with any ready-to-use solution.

The higher-level solution I see is just using lots of soft-links. But
it's error-prone, needs quite complicated algorithms when
adding/removing a partition-set (eg. "interface").

It could probably be implemented at a lower level (file-system driver,
using special attributes for partition-sets ("Interfaces") and
partitions ("X11")), but would make the doc-system less portable (is
it really a problem here ?)


Yes, I know, it's a big thing... but it might be a good idea ?

Regards,
-- 
Yann Dirson <dirson@univ-mlv.fr>
http://monge.univ-mlv.fr/~dirson


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