Re: RFC: Keywords instead of Section

[Bill Allombert <allomber@math.u-bordeaux.fr>]

Hello,

I agree that Debian need tools to find packages, but I am not sure keywords
search is the solution because this suppose everybody agree on keywords and it
is seldom the case. Even if Debian developpers agree on the list of keywords,
will Debian users agree on their meaning ?  

The problem with the section approach is not so much that they are of
unbalanced size but that too many packages does not fit well in a section.  For
example GUI-enabled mail user agent can be in section "mail" or section "x11".

Also another problem currently is that lots of package provide fonctionnalities
user may never have thought of before reading the description, but are very
useful.  I remember the first time I read by chance the description of
wwwoffle, I immediatly understood it was a very useful package for me. But I
would have never made a specific search for such a package.

I would prefer search based on the description content. It is already available
in console-apt, for example, and there are other tools for doing that,
"apt-cache search" and  dpkg-query in the dpkg-iasearch package.

They are a good starting point.

Why Future-Package-Manager would not implement easy access to
such tools ? 

Regards,
--
Bill. <ballombe@debian.org>