Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Duane Malcolm <d.malcolm AT auckland.ac.nz>]

Robin Cook wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-02-24 at 08:17 +0100, Arjan Bouter 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.
> >
> > 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.
> >
> > Don't get me wrong, the layout of the grimoires does need some attention :)
> > Thanks for taking care of this guys.
> >
> > Arjan
>
>
> I personally dislike having to search though all the sections looking
> for gnome programs myself but then for GUI programs I tend to run GTK+ /
> Gnome programs exclusively.  I was for the subsections back when they
> were first discussed but it was decided that it was too difficult at
> that time to implement, don't know if that has gotten any easier or not.
> If there was a way to implement it another way that is more elegant and
> easier I would be in favor of it.  And it is definitely easier for me to
> maintain when they are in a single section.

This would be another advantage of having a CATEGORY flag in the DETAILS 
file. Then the section does not have to strictly describe what is in the 
section directory, for example, it could be the name of the guru or 
group of gurus maintaining it, or the name of a group of programs. 
Another example is an octave section which would include octave, 
octave-devel, octaviz and octave-forge and this could be maintained by 
the most active octave user or users. Whereas, at the moment it's only 
maintained by the science guru who also maintains a lot of other spells 
the guru doesn't use. Also spells can then be moved around sections 
without loosing what categories it fit's into.

Therefore, the "section" directories become storage mechanism not a 
categorizing mechanisms.

This is not to say you would not store them according to the most 
appropriate section.

> CuZnDragon
> Robin Cook
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> SM-Discuss mailing list
> SM-Discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/sm-discuss