Re: cleaning up our task packages
On Wed, Dec 06, 2000 at 09:28:23PM -0800, Joey Hess wrote:
<snip>
> 1. It is long. More than 2x as long as the list in potato, much longer than
> one or even two screens. It is approaching a length that most hurried
> people will probably not bother reading. I'll bet that back in the early
> days, dselect's list was about this long, and the thought, frankly, scares
> me..
I agree that it is a bit long; however, I think the best way to resolve this
would be to tell the user that there are more tasks listed below, perhaps by
placing a little 'More Below...' thing at the bottom of the screen. A little
trimming would be good but I don't think we should cut the list as extensively
as you suggest. See below for my reasoning.
> 2. It is filled with junk. Task packages are supposed to deliniate _tasks_:
> things one would want to use a computer for. They are supposed to make
> decisions _for_ people who cannot be bothered to make decisions for
> themselves[1]. So why do we have three sets of games, two desktops,
> and a slew of different programming languages all listed?
Some of these tasks should be folded into one, e.g. the multiple KDE or GNOME
tasks; most of the key programs related to these tasks would then be installed
and the user can then trim it using apt or dselect. Other tasks, however,
shouldn't be consolidate, especially the programming stuff. I say this because
doing so would pack to many separate things into the task meta-package. For
example, if I were interested in C programming only, I would install the C
programming task package; if instead, it were folded into a single programming
task package, I would end up with a lot of stuff I don't want or need like
Python or Perl.
Just my 2 cents worth.
Cheng
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