Re: new Package of the Day features
Hey, here's a neat app I just discovered five minutes ago via POTD:
http://potd.redsymbol.net/?p=dog
Cool! It's working for me already :)
On Wednesday 05 July 2006 02:46 pm, Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
> the bottom of the p.d.o pages provide a variety of links, some of
> which actually go upstream, and that's probably where the real use
> is. [snip] MAybe there's a way to grep the
> p.d.o pages for useful links if they occur? just thought.
That's a really good idea. I could make it so that a script would
scrape the p.d.o page for the new package each hour. Andrew, can you
point out a p.d.o page or pages that contain links like that? The few
I looked at did not really contain any ([2], for example)
I think one way to generalize the issue is, how can I (as the POTD
visitor/user) learn or experience more about this package that
intrigues me? It's a little tricky because the answer to that question
depends on (a) the package and (b) the user. Take the package "dog",
above, as an example. (It's like cat, but can fetch a file via http
and do other tricks.) I read the description, and immediately
understood what it could do for me. I really didn't need any more
background information.
Compare this with the ethereal package, whose description I'll paste
here: "Ethereal is a network traffic analyzer, or "sniffer", for Unix
and Unix-like operating systems. A sniffer is a tool used to capture
packets off the wire. Ethereal decodes numerous protocols"
Imagine I'm a user who sees this, has never used packet sniffers, but is
technically inclined in a way that I'm curious about them. I might
want to know about what sorts of things you can do by looking at
network traffic, what protocols are used in what situations, how hard
or easy it is to get up to speed on using this tool, what similar
network analysis tools might exist. Or maybe I just have a general
sense that this tool is part of a subject I would like to know more
about.
Interestingly, the Wikipedia web page for ethereal [1] is just about
perfect for all that. In particular, most of the jargon words have
links to whole pages elaborating on them. Many popular apps will have
such WP pages; I have no idea what fraction of less-than-famous
packages will.
The ideal, I think, would be if I could put a "Learn more..." link below
the package description, which would magically take the user somewhere
that s/he could learn about the wider context and connections of the
package. Perhaps I could make POTD discover any Wikipedia page for the
app, and use that as the link. Thoughts, anyone?
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereal_%28software%29
[2] http://packages.debian.org/stable/web/drupal
--
Peace,
Aaron Maxwell - http://redsymbol.net
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