Re: the math section should really be science
Don't forget that you can have subsections (eg science/math,
science/biology). This is already used for non-US/{contrib,non-free}; why
not use it for things like this?
Regards,
Alex.
On Sat, 10 Mar 2001, Brian Russo wrote:
> 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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