[maemo-developers] Command line applications and Extras

[From: Valerio Valerio]

HI,

On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 5:14 PM, Graham Cobb
<g+770 at cobb.uk.net<g%2B770 at cobb.uk.net>
> wrote:

> On Friday 08 January 2010 16:27:07 Valerio Valerio wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > on a related note, some people are also suggesting a category for
> > plugins[1] and stuff that is invisible to the users until they activate
> > them(we've already a lot of them in the repos), I think I read about some
> > plans to add this category, not sure, but could be a good opportunity to
> > add this category as well.
>

Well the plugins category is out of scope here, was just a possible
discussion point.

>
> NOOOO!!!
>

Well the community made a decision, it was discussed during a long period of
time here and in TMO, don't you think we should respect the community
decision ?


>
> That is the whole problem with this "solution".  The **problem** is
> NOT "command line apps"!  The problem is "things which do not install an
> icon
> to run them".  CLI apps are the most visible examples today (because they
> are
> cheap to port, and because they are mostly, but not all, quite geeky) but
> they won't always be.  For the ordinary users they aren't interested in
> whether this app doesn't have an icon because it is a command line utility
> or
> because it is a behind-the-scenes daemon or because it is a control-panel
> applet or because it is a plugin or because it is an updated dataset for an
> application or ...
>
> We don't need one category for each of those.  We need a solution to
> identify
> things which do not install an "application" as far as the naive user is
> concerned (i.e. they do not install an icon in the panel of icons for
> applications).
>
> And the answer to that is not categories at all.  The category (network,
> office, system, game, ...) is completely othogonal to how it is invoked or
> used.  A new set of levels for a game should be in the games category, but
> it
> will not install an application icon.  openssh-server should be in the
> network category, but it doesn't install an application icon, nor is it a
> command line app.  openssh-client should also be in the network category
> and
> is a command line app.
>
> The CLI apps category is the wrong solution.  And adding more categories is
> even more wrong.
>
> The right solution is to use maemo.org instead of HAM as the way for most
> users to install things and for the website to show applications based on
> popularity.  If a command line app can rise to the top of the popularity
> list
> despite not having a GUI then that is great!  In practice it won't and the
> command line apps will be low down the lists in their categories (along
> with
> the clunky GUI apps, the non-finger-friendly apps, the buggy apps, etc.).
>

Don't know if I get it, your suggestion is to not change anything ?


Best regards,

-- 
Valério Valério

http://www.valeriovalerio.org


> Graham
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