Re: Debian menu and the Apps/Science section
On Sun, May 14, 2006 at 10:21:12PM +0200, Thomas Walter wrote:
> On Sun, 2006-05-14 at 20:36, gnwiii@gmail.com wrote:
> > On 5/14/06, Paul E Condon <pecondon@mesanetworks.net> wrote:
> >
>
> [snip]
>
> >
> > 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)
>
> In my opinion, this would make Biology the toplevel below Science and
> medicine, ... below.
> Reason: the most abstract value is Biology.
> medicine is done on a subsection of biological pieces
> forensic is a more specific part of medicine, if I understand correct
> agriculture in parallel to medicine as it covers another big part of
> Bio.
>
> Sometime happens that the same "word" applies to 2 different meanings:
> 1.) a global one
> 2.) a specific one, being a piece of the global one.
>
> > 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".
> >
>
> Would this be covered by adding the same application into diffent
> sections?
>
> > 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.
>
> Wouldn't this be better used as attribute tags to classify applications
> than building a menue list?
I had in mind the union of all the namee departments as opposed to the
intersection. The thrust of that suggestion is to avoid precisely the
kind of controversy that replyers raise as objections. e.g. if any
major university has a Black Sciences Department, or a Womens Sciences
Department, or an Extraterrestial Intelligence Department, or whatever,
then Debian can have such a category. IMHO, the goal of a rational
heirarchical categorical scheme is quite unrealistic. Perhaps, there
could be a top level distinction between 'traditional', meaning department
names that were common in the time of Queen Victoria, and 'modern',
meaning everything more recent.
Maybe this really is attribute tags. The heirarchy is then unnecessary,
as the packages will be organized alphabetically by name in the package
pool.
--
Paul E Condon
pecondon@mesanetworks.net
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