[maemo-community] [Council] Package categories

[From: Simon Pickering]

> One of the justifications people use is that they have a large number
> of plugins/translation packs etc. Putting these in their own section
> "prevents" user confusion by isolating them. This, of course, breaks
> down when everyone uses "All" all of the time.
> 
> My suggestion would be to take further the customisation we require of
> the "Section" header and have the following valid values for
> "Section":
> 
>    1) "Section: <debian_section>"
>       - Debian Packaging Manual,
>         http://wiki.maemo.org/Task:Package_categories#Debian
> 
>    2) "Section: user/<maemo_section>[,<maemo_section>]*"
>       - Maemo Packaging Policy (revised),
>         
> http://wiki.maemo.org/Task:Package_categories#Additional_categories
> 
>    3) "Section: user/<package>/<maemo_section>"
>       - Only show package if <package> is installed.
> 
>   where:
>     <debian_section> = (admin|comm|devel|doc|editors|electronics|...)
> 
>     <maemo_section>  = (communication|games|multimedia|...)
> 
> The comma-separated version is optional, but means that app authors
> don't have to spend ages working out if (say) an online collaboration
> tool is "communication" or "office". They can put it in both. Consider
> this DebTags::Lite.

Yes, I think multiple sections would be very useful, these can be handled in
the same way as I mentioned earlier, if it's not an official section then
stick it in "Others".

> The second enhancement is to allow "Section:
> user/<package>/<maemo_section>" - this means that a package will
> appear only in a list if its parent (<package>) is installed. So, you
> could have:
> 
>     Package: canola2
>     Section: user/multimedia
> 
>     Package: canola2-theme-red
>     Section: user/canola2/themes

Typo I hope, canola2 shouldn't be a top-level section name imo. Better this:

    Package: canola2-theme-red
    Section: user/multimedia/canola2/themes

> 
> Thoughts welcome.

In this case it would be easier to implement and probably nicer for the user
to not have things arbitrarily hidden from them (perhaps I don't want to
install Canola to see which plugins are available), if we simply used the
sub-sections as presented. So one would click on the "Multimedia" section,
then be presented with packages which live in there, but also another link
to move to the 2nd level "Canola" in which Canola specific plugins could
live. And so on.

Cheers,


Simon