Re: the math section should really be science
On Sun, Mar 11, 2001 at 05:20:31PM +1100, Drew Parsons wrote:
> The question arises, what subsection should it be put into?
> A comparable program, rasmol, is already in debian, in the math subsection.
> But computational chemistry is not, strictly speaking, mathematics (it
> can be considered a sub-branch of mathematics, but you don't usually talk
> about the weight or electron affinity of a number).
>
> Looking through the math section, there are other packages which aren't
> strictly maths: some biomaths programs (genesis, busx, hmmr), some plotting
> programs (sciplot, grace, geg), some astronomical tools (seesat5, ssystem).
true.. i maintain sciplot, its use is not 'strictly' maths,
is make 'strictly' devel though? i could probably use 'make' for
stuff that would not necessarily be called 'development'
or.. I could use hindent to reformat my html code without
necessarily putting it on the 'web'
..
>
> I therefore wonder if it would not be more appropriate to call this
> subsection "science" rather than "math" ?
I've thought of this before, given that the sections are not
fine-grained at all, I disagree with this proposal.
science is such a generic word, it roughly (very roughly) equates
with "having knowledge"
applied sciences.. social sciences.. pure sciences..
even under those 3 broad non-all-inclusive supercategories
theres many branches..
As some have said (I forget who and where) the only way to fix the
section system is to replace it with keywords, for which
having a canonical list somewhere would likely prevent it
from being a huge mess.
would even this be easy? no not really, its really hard to
summarize "what something is useful for" in a single word
much less several words, if you are working from
a non-exhaustive list of words.
hell.. there will always be unthought of uses.. you'd want to
relegate it to what the common uses are.. even then
this would not be easy.
personally i think unless someone cares enough, its just
as well to leave it the way it is.
maybe a useful compromise would be to let something
inhabit multiple sections
--
Brian Russo <brusso@phys.hawaii.edu>
Debian/GNU Linux <wolfie@debian.org> http://www.debian.org
LPSG "member" <wolfie@lpsg.org> http://www.lpsg.org
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