Re: Sections

[Drew Scott Daniels <umdanie8@cc.UManitoba.CA>]

On 07 Apr 2003 07:51:43 +0200, Thomas Hood wrote:
> On Sun, 2003-04-06 at 20:37, Mark Howard wrote:
> >   Reading the discussions based on bug #187245, it seems that most
> > people agree that package sections are fairly useless. Freshmeat style
> > trove categorisation is quite an interesting idea, but it would then
> > make it quite difficult to produce tools like aptitude which could
> > potentially list all possible packages in a tree - there would be too
> > much duplication.
>
But it wouldn't hurt to have it as an option for people who are only
looking at s few small sections.

> Why is this a problem?  Packages have various characteristics
> and so can appear at various location in the listing.

A good example of his idea is dmoz.org's subdirectories. I see it as a
potential problem to people who are looking at all of the sections and see
the same package listed many times and waste too much time looking at
things they already looked at. Another way to solve this is however some
way to set "I don't want this package so don't show it in other sections"
and perhaps hide those and already selected packages, although then a user
may accidently install two packages which have the same functionality.

> > I think it would be a good idea to copy the excellent work of the new
> > menu system - have a set of defined start sections and allow developers
> > to set hints for others. This seems to be very successful in the menu -
> > despite no formal organization. (Perhaps the menu section could be taken
> > directly from the package section, only including apps and games in the
> > menus - this would be a real bonus to the menu as it would make sure
> > that all apps are listed there)
>
> Keep in mind that one package can contain a variety of
> things, including a variety of programs which may
> appear at different places in an application menu.
> There is no 1:1 mapping between programs and packages.
>
I won't get into what I think a package should and shouldn't be, but there
is advantages to the current one section per package way of categorizing
packages. It's not nice to show a user the same question over and over
again.

I think sections should be kept for the benefit of older programs and some
users. I think trove descriptions should be added to allow users to
query/search for packages according to needs/wants... An only display
packages once, with hints is very useful for first time installs and for
people who want to look through most of the packages in the archive.

     Drew Daniels