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sm-discuss - Re: [SM-Discuss] New sections [Was: New archive and perl-cpan maintainer]

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  • From: Duane Malcolm <d.malcolm AT auckland.ac.nz>
  • To: Arjan Bouter <abouter AT sourcemage.org>
  • Cc: sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [SM-Discuss] New sections [Was: New archive and perl-cpan maintainer]
  • Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 08:42:31 +1300

Arjan Bouter wrote:
On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 09:25:48 +1300
Duane Malcolm <d.malcolm AT auckland.ac.nz> wrote:



A better example is the section "gnome2-apps" store gnome applications however, the section name doesn't describe what the spell does, gedit is an editor, gthumb is a image viewer and gnumeric is a great spreadsheet, however someone new to linux cannot distingush this from the section name. A category flag will solve this. And the directory structure can become transparent to the user and becomes a storage method for maintainers.



From what I understand, the gnome spells and libs which form the gnome desktop
very much depend on each other and have to be updated together for them to
keep
working. Correct me if I'm wrong but I guess splitting them into different
sections maintained by differrent gurus would complicate matters by having to
synchronize updates between sections...
Same would be the case for kde and xfce I guess.
Don't get me wrong, I think the way the gnome apps are stored in the right directories. I'm fine with that. The current setup is geared towards maintaining spells not searching spells, and this is the way it should be. When I want to try out new audio players I do a "gaze what `gaze section audio-players`" and read through them. This is far better than "gaze search". Try searching for "audio player". However I miss the gnome audio players.

I kind of like the way those sections are now, because one only has to browse
one section to build those desktops. Instead of hunting the grimoire for apps
which go with that particular environment.
You too browse the sections to find a spell you like. This is fine when you are looking for an audio player for gnome but when you're looking for any audio player you have to browse 4-5 sections to get most of them.

Don't get me wrong, the layout of the grimoires does need some attention :)
Thanks for taking care of this guys.

You asked what is wrong with putting it in as part of the description in the DETAILS file. A CATEGORY will allow clear distinction between a general description of the spell and what category or section(s) it belongs to.

In summary:
- I think the grimoire sections are for maintaining
- Many use the sections for searching, this fails when a spell belongs to multiple sections, therefore you have to search multiple section.
- You can use "gaze search" but there is a lot of noise and false hits.
- One remedy is to include a category flag. This could be based on the Sourceforge or Freshmeat "Topic" flags.


Cheers, Duane.




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