Re: Menu-2.0, optimized menu tree, hints

[joost witteveen <joostje@cistron.nl>]

Je 1999/06/27(0)/15:06, Steve Greenland montris sian geniecon skribante:

> Consider that things like xdvi and tkman should be under "Apps/Viewers".
> It would never occur to me that they could be under "Apps/Multimedia";
> If I found them there, I would submit a bug to the package maintainers
> (who might well disagree with me, but none-the-less).

Thanks for answering that one yourself:
 
> Hmmm, a little more thought leads me to the conclusion that things like
> xdvi and tkman wouldn't end up under "Apps/Multimedia" (because their
> hintlists wouldn't include "multimedia", but instead somewhere over in
> the text tree, perhaps. Is that correct?

Yes, that's correct.

> I still don't think that I like the idea of the menu tree being
> re-arranged (except the addition and removal of subtrees) just because I
> install a new package. It seems like "collapsible deep trees" would get
> most of the benefit and be a lot less confusing than the hints system,
> cool as it is.

It gets both. If we don't want those "Multimedia" situations, then we
simply don't define hints that way.

The major problem with the collapsing tree is that it will always remain
a problem. No matter how deep we think we make it, there will always
be locations where we have to make the tree even deeper. And, wherever
that happens, we will have to move _every_ package under that tree.

With the hints (implemented as it's now), we can simply add a few hints
to a specific submenu, and all menu entries below that submenu will
inherit those hints.

Also, notice that it is higly unlikely for your menu structure to change
at all when you add one package. The tree generated at the moment is
just identical to the one used by debian anyway (except for some collapsed
submenus).


-- 
joostje