Re: Renaming 'math' section 'science'

[<treacy@debian.org>(James A. Treacy)]

> trd>You will need to get people's attention by starting a new thread called
> trd>"rename math directory to science" or something like that.  Not enough
> trd>people are reading this discussion.
> 
There is a real problem here that different people have completely different
ideas on how things should be organized. For example, I consider most of
the entries under math to be concerned with numerical analysis (fft in fftw;
linear algebra in meschach, gsl (this may do more), saml; numerically solving
diff. eqs. in felt; general numerical computations in octave and scilab).
Others with a less numerical background may consider this all just to be
'science'. Others who don't even know what this stuff is may think it is
all 'math'.

Here is I feel 'math' should be broken up:
num_anal:
   fftw
   meschach
   gsl
   saml
   felt
   octave
   scilab
   latex
   cln
   python-numeric
   pretty much anything released by SAL

math:
   apcalc
   all calculators (this is where most people would expect to find them)
   bc
   calc
   computer algebra systems (no free ones yet that I know of)
   statistical packages (or num_anal depending on the background of
              the statistician. I'll let them decide)

graphics:
   all plotting programs

???:
   hmmmer
   spreadsheets

Note that I don't know what everything is so haven't categorized it all.


Actually, in thinking about this, the whole system of categorizing packages
needs to be redone in Debian. How packages are organized for selection by
users should be much more flexible than our current system allows. What I
am thinking is to expand the 'Section' variable in the Packages files to
include subsections. This won't affect how the archive is organized, but
in the long run will make package selection much easier.

This would allow us to have categories like the following:
misc/dbserver        all database servers
misc/dbclient        all database clients
math/num_anal        numerical analysis software
math/calculator      all calculators

New categories could only be added if the policy group allows it.
This method of organizing would allow us to create new categories and
get rid of old ones without having to reorganize the archive.
For example, if it was decided that num_anal was too broad, it could
be broken down into math/lin_alg and math/num_integration.
Thus, the existing bad section names wouldn't matter as the user won't see
them.

This would enable the user to go into an improved version of dselect or apt
and instead of being hit by the entire section 'web' could see the sections
'web browsers', 'web servers', 'html editor', 'web log analyzer' and 'CGI'
and have many fewer packages to select from.

There are already some minor flaws I've noticed in this which are easily
remedied. If people like the idea I could expand upon it and bring it to
-policy. The big stumbling block to this would be the necessary changes to
the archive management programs, dselect and apt.

Jay Treacy