Bug#144046: general: Sections are not finely grained
> I think it would be better to drop the sections altogether and use a
> keyword-based system someone suggested a few months ago. The advantages
> would be:
> - ultimate fine-grainedness (?)
> - no dillemas about where to put packages which fit in more than
> section (like x11 net-related programs)
Users need a hierachical layout in order to find software. Keyword
by themselves are not that much useful since they would be only appropiate
to the language used. Several disadvantages:
1.- more difficult to translate than sections
2.- are not organised hierarchicaly (sp?)
3.- difficult to represent graphically in a package-administration gui
(sections are easily represented as trees).
If you want to have a keyword-based system I would suggest you
take a look at dpkg-iasearch (yes, not documented, but it's a proof of
concept) which uses natural language retrieval techniques (TFIDF
vectorisation of documents) to allow for more powerful searchs than
"apt-cache search XXX".
This kind of stuff (dpkg-iasearch or apt-cache search) should be
implemented in the GUI too, but sections are very much needed IMHO and
could be very useful if properly organised.
Also take in account that the users will always see a
hierarchicaly (sp?) division of software if using the menu system (in any
window manager) or KDE and GNOME.
Javi
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