http://fedoraproject.org/extras/4/i386/repodata/

[Matthew Miller]

On Wed, Jul 13, 2005 at 11:59:33PM -0400, Chris Ricker wrote:
> Some observations:
> * categorization takes longer than you'd expect ;-)
> * there are some categories which seem overly broad; system-tools for 
> example could be broken up more
> * some stuff didn't fit any existing categories (allegro-tools, for one)
> Thoughts?

I think there's two distinct purposes for which people want to use groups:

  A) a way to put similar programs in the same place so they're
     easy to find by browsing

  B) a way to define sets of programs useful for a particular environment
     or task 

The first is generally what one wants in repoview or in a GUI package tool
when looking for a particular program.

The second is what is probably best in the installer, and maybe also useful
in an after-install GUI tool.

The original in-spec groups are more geared to the first, and the current
comps.xml more to the second -- with some fuzziness in both cases.

The problem is that these two different purposes want groups that look very
different. For the second, a group of all web browsers is basically stupid
-- whereas if you want to see what web browsers are available and choose
one or more, it's exactly what you want. And also for the second purpose,
it's perfectly okay for some or even most packages to not be listed -- but
that's very frustrating for the first.

This makes me think that categorization may be better approached via
"tagging", and then different applications could present different views of
the tags as appropriate. For example, various web browsers could have tags
like this:

  firefox: Web Browser, X11, Typical Desktop, Internet Station
  dillo: Web Browser, X11, Lightweight Desktop
  epiphany: Web Browser, X11, GNOME
  konqueror: Web Browser, X11, KDE
  lynx: Web Browser, Console, Visually Impaired Desktop
  elinks: Web Browser, Console

(Or whatever -- that's off the top of my head.)

And then, repoview and other package browsers could present all web browsers
neatly together, whereas the installer could present groups like "Typical
Desktop".


-- 
Matthew Miller           mattdm at mattdm.org        <http://www.mattdm.org/>
Boston University Linux      ------>                <http://linux.bu.edu/>
Current office temperature: 75 degrees Fahrenheit.