Re: Debian menu and the Apps/Science section
Hello,
On Mon, 2006-05-15 at 03:56, Russell Shaw wrote:
> gnwiii@gmail.com wrote:
> > On 5/14/06, Paul E Condon <pecondon@mesanetworks.net> wrote:
> >
> >> I suggest that the heirarchy be patterned after the organizational
> >> structure of the faculty of a major university. There is, I believe, a
> >> lot of agreement on this structure.
> >
> >
> > No there is not agreement. Harvard ended up with the Divison of
> > Engineering and Applied Sciences (DEAP) as it was called only after
> > a bid to transfer the funds to MIT was blocked by the court. Superb
> > research programs have encountered difficulties because they were
> > considered "off-topic" by the conventional disciplines -- too applied for
> > the maths dept, too mathy for the botany dept.
> >
> > One way to defeat the tradional academic breakdown would be to
> > permit multiple categories, e.g.,
> >
> > Ag(riculture), Bo(tany), Ch(emistry), Ec(onomics), Ma(thematics),
> > Ph(ysics),
> > Ag+Ma, Ma+Ph, etc.
> >
> >> Some may object that certain
> >> departments at their university don't really do Science with a capital
> >> 's'. But few would hold that these non-Science departments do not
> >> actually exist. So, the structure provides a convenient place to put
> >> any software associated with any activity whose practitioners aspire
> >> to being 'scientists'. Any other structure, opens Debian to becoming
> >> a battleground for an academic war. Because I am somewhat parochial
> >> American, I suggest some sort of union of the tree structures of the
> >> several Ivy League schools.
> >
> >
> > Some math dept's would put "mathematical software" in the category of
> > non-math just as some physics depts would put economics in non-science.
> >
> >> Alternatively, look at the faculty structures of the top dozen schools
> >> in the world in terms of the number of Nobel Prize winners on the
> >> faculty. But this alternative suffers from there being good scientific
> >> activities for which there is no Nobel Prize.
> >
> >
> > The goal for Debian should be to make it easier for users to locate
> > tools for their problems. There are many tools that are specific to
> > a narrow subject area (e.g., DNA sequencing apps could be biology,
> > medicine, forensic, agriculture, fisheries) and others (vector/matrix
> > languages such as octave, Gnu Data Language, S+) that are used in
> > many different fields. One way to implement this would be to support
> > multiple established classification systems and and let authors/packagers
> > choose the system(s) that feels right to them. The top level breakdown
> > would be done by the classification scheme. Multiple schemes would
> > be handled by having, e.g., AMS, GAMS, AMS+GAMS, ..., "3 or more".
> >
> > I'm familiar with GAMS and the AMS 2000 schemes:
> >
> > <http://gams.nist.gov/Taxonomy.html>.
> > The current GAMS scheme is viewed as part of a larger scheme
> > encompassing all software, but I don't know if the larger scheme
> > has ever been put to practice.
> >
> > American Math Society 2000 Mathematics Subject Classification
> > <http://www.ams.org/msc/>
> >
> > http://xml.coverpages.org/classification.html lists many classification
> > systems -- if someone feels they can't use GAMS or AMS, the might
> > find something here.
>
> The problem is that deciding on a menu structure will never satisfy all
> users, especially when there are equally valid choices.
>
> It is no good aiming to satisfy only 90% of users. If each choice/feature
> in a system (such as the linux desktop) satisfies 90% (and dis-satisfies 10%),
> then after 21 such features, 90% of users will be dis-satisfied with *something*.
>
> The thing that should be fixed is that a window manager or menuing service should
> allow a user to easily configure (preferrably with visual drag-n-drop) where the
> new menu entry should be placed when an application is installed.
>
> Menu attributes of an install package should all have equal precedence so that
> no hierarchy is implied, other than a sensible default. Eg, an app might have
> the menu attributes:
>
> science, physics, relativity
>
> and that can reflect the default menu hierarchy. However, if the user already has
> a menu structure with:
>
> science|relativity|physics
> science|relativity|philosophy
> etc
>
> then the app can by default put an entry into science|relativity|physics.
>
> The user could even set an option so that if there is no menu path matching
> all the menu attributes of a package, then a dialog could be displayed for
> the user to choose/create a menu path.
>
Just some thaughts about a try to extend this:
The Debian WEB Site has a debtag browser, example
http://debian.vitavonni.de/packagebrowser/edit.cgi?package=yale&tags=field
Maybe some friendly user can tell me, how to use that, to find programs
by specifying tags. I assume I have overlook the appropriate link.
Perhaps something similar, based of the tags accompanied by the
installed packages. Then as user one can search for what is available
on the current box. For applications often used by this user, the user
is free to add it into the "favorite" list of applications structured as
wanted.
Kind Regards,
Thomas
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