[maemo-developers] Application manager category view proposals

[From: Marius Vollmer]

>>>    1) Force the Application Manager to do it, based on a simple rule
>>>       like having an i18n label defined.
>>
>> This is clever!  Too clever?  We could start with this: I could quite
>> easily add a setting that enables this behavior.

I have implemented this now in the 2.1.x branch:

    https://garage.maemo.org/svn/hildon-app-mgr/branches/2.1.x

The list of allowed categories is defined by the translations available
in the "hildon-application-manager-categories" textdomain.  These
translations are, currently, shipped with the hildon-application-manager
package itself.  You can replace them from another package, if that is
needed.

The current translations are for the old categories, since I had all the
translations for them.  Here is an example for en_GB:

    msgid "accessories"
    msgstr "Accessories"

    msgid "communication"
    msgstr "Communication"

    msgid "games"
    msgstr "Games"

    msgid "multimedia"
    msgstr "Multimedia"

    msgid "office"
    msgstr "Office"

    msgid "programming"
    msgstr "Programming"

    msgid "support"
    msgstr "Support"

    msgid "themes"
    msgstr "Themes"

    msgid "tools"
    msgstr "Tools"

The "all" and "other" categories should not be included in this list,
they are provided by the hildon-application-manager itself.  (Including
"other" would be harmful: you get two "Other" categories in the UI.)

Packages with section that don't have a translation are moved into
"other".  This is done on a language by language basis: if you don't
have a translation for a category in one language, you don't get that
category at all, it's packages appear in "other".  You do not get a
untranslated category.

As an edge case, when you don't have any translations for a language,
all packages go to "other", and in that case the Application manager UI
will not show categories at all (it only does that when there are more
than two categories).

Please test the branch.  (Please report any difficulties you have when
building it as well.  I want it to be smooth...)  I'll set the internal
release machinery in motion once I get feedback from you guys.


So, for the new categories to be officially adopted, we need
translations to all the supported languages:

    en_GB es_MX nl_NL pt_BR no_NO fi_FI it_IT fr_CA
    da_DK en_US pt_PT sv_SE fr_FR es_ES ru_RU de_DE 

for these categories:

    desktop education graphics navigation network science
    system utilities

I frankly have no idea how realistic it is to get Nokia involved in this
for Diablo.  Can we proceed without Nokia?  Translations is something
that communities are traditionally quite good at.  Also, we might lift
translations from Gnome or KDE, right?

I will immediately set the internal translation wheels in motion for
_Fremantle_, which might provide us with translations that we can
backport to Diablo.


(More on Application specific subcategories from my side later.  Don't
know what to think about them yet... using the Section field for them
seems like a even worse abuse than the oiginal user/CATGEORY hack...)