Re: Debian menus policy
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
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