[aur-dev] Remove category support
Hi, I've seen mention of removing the categories from the AUR several times in aur-general, and someone mentioned that, while they serve no real purpose, nobody has sent patches either. Well, I gave this a try to see how well I could do and this *seems* to work fine, though more granualar testing may be required (I'll do this if the patch seems ok, and if its goal is deemed acceptable). Feedback is, naturally, greatly appreciated. Cheers, -- Hugo Osvaldo Barrera A: Because we read from top to bottom, left to right. Q: Why should I start my reply below the quoted text?
Hi,
I've seen mention of removing the categories from the AUR several times in aur-general, and someone mentioned that, while they serve no real purpose, nobody has sent patches either.
I'm not sure if it has been mentioned before, so I thought I would put it out there. The reason the current categories are not used is because they suck (for lack of a better term). The current categories are too limited and are not well suited for organizing today's packages. If the categories were updated (renamed) I think many people would use them. I know that I would! Best Regards, Dustin Falgout
On 2015-02-27 12:45, Dustin Falgout wrote:
Hi,
I've seen mention of removing the categories from the AUR several times in aur-general, and someone mentioned that, while they serve no real purpose, nobody has sent patches either.
I'm not sure if it has been mentioned before, so I thought I would put it out there. The reason the current categories are not used is because they suck (for lack of a better term). The current categories are too limited and are not well suited for organizing today's packages. If the categories were updated (renamed) I think many people would use them. I know that I would!
Best Regards, Dustin Falgout
Now that we have a patch to remove then, I guess it's time to decide if we'll remove them, or rename them once and for all. IMHO, renaming them won't solve all of the issues. There's too many things that are ambiguous, but I'm willing to see a sample of suggested categories. Cheers, -- Hugo Osvaldo Barrera A: Because we read from top to bottom, left to right. Q: Why should I start my reply below the quoted text?
Now that we have a patch to remove then, I guess it's time to decide if we'll remove them, or rename them once and for all.
IMHO, renaming them won't solve all of the issues. There's too many things that are ambiguous, but I'm willing to see a sample of suggested categories.
Cheers,
-- Hugo Osvaldo Barrera A: Because we read from top to bottom, left to right. Q: Why should I start my reply below the quoted text?
Well, I think the natural place to start is the freedesktop.org spec. I think it makes sense to use all the main categories[1] and then choose a few child categories from the Additional Categories[2] defined by the spec. [1] http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/apa.html [2] http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/apas02.html Cheers! Dustin
On Fri, 27 Feb 2015 at 14:56:40, Dustin Falgout wrote:
[...] Well, I think the natural place to start is the freedesktop.org spec. I think it makes sense to use all the main categories[1] and then choose a few child categories from the Additional Categories[2] defined by the spec.
I prefer replacing the hard-coded categories with user-definable tags.
[1] http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/apa.html [2] http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/apas02.html
Cheers! Dustin
On 27.02.2015 15:23, Lukas Fleischer wrote:
On Fri, 27 Feb 2015 at 14:56:40, Dustin Falgout wrote:
[...] Well, I think the natural place to start is the freedesktop.org spec. I think it makes sense to use all the main categories[1] and then choose a few child categories from the Additional Categories[2] defined by the spec.
I prefer replacing the hard-coded categories with user-definable tags.
Shouldn't such tags be in the PKGBUILD and also be available in pacman for searching? That said you pretty much get all those features if you put hashtags (like on twitter) into the description of the package. All that's missing then would be a tag cloud, but that's pretty simple to set up if the hashtag scheme was used.
I prefer replacing the hard-coded categories with user-definable tags.
Shouldn't such tags be in the PKGBUILD and also be available in pacman for searching? That said you pretty much get all those features if you put hashtags (like on twitter) into the description of the package.
All that's missing then would be a tag cloud, but that's pretty simple to set up if the hashtag scheme was used.
That's a neat idea which certainly is easy enough to accomplish. Though I don't think such tags should replace the categories. Users may not always know exactly what app/package they are looking for. Categories are the best way to facilitate app/package discovery (IMO). Best Regards, Dustin Falgout
On Fri, 27 Feb 2015 at 17:20:36, Dustin Falgout wrote:
[...] That's a neat idea which certainly is easy enough to accomplish. Though I don't think such tags should replace the categories. Users may not always know exactly what app/package they are looking for. Categories are the best way to facilitate app/package discovery (IMO).
Could you please provide 2-3 realistic use cases (maybe with examples on the production AUR database) where categories actually help with finding the right package? Having such examples might help with investigating whether tags would be a good replacement and how we can generally improve the search interface.
Best Regards, Dustin Falgout
Regards, Lukas
On 2015-02-27 13:56, Dustin Falgout wrote:
Well, I think the natural place to start is the freedesktop.org spec. I think it makes sense to use all the main categories[1] and then choose a few child categories from the Additional Categories[2] defined by the spec.
[1] http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/apa.html [2] http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/apas02.html
The big difference with those categories is that a single menu entry may have multiple categories, which actually avoid all the "There's no appropriate single one" issue. On 2015-02-27 16:24, Florian Pritz wrote:
Shouldn't such tags be in the PKGBUILD and also be available in pacman for searching? That said you pretty much get all those features if you put hashtags (like on twitter) into the description of the package.
All that's missing then would be a tag cloud, but that's pretty simple to set up if the hashtag scheme was used.
I actually suggested this on aur-general, but the idea was pretty much rejected. I'd love to see free-form tags on packages. All games would have "games", for example, to see which games i have locally pretty fast. On 2015-02-27 18:36, Lukas Fleischer wrote:
Could you please provide 2-3 realistic use cases (maybe with examples on the production AUR database) where categories actually help with finding the right package? Having such examples might help with investigating whether tags would be a good replacement and how we can generally improve the search interface.
That's an excelent starting point if we're too keep categores. I'm also pretty sure that we have clear examples were there's no single appropiate category. -- Hugo Osvaldo Barrera A: Because we read from top to bottom, left to right. Q: Why should I start my reply below the quoted text?
On Fri 27 Feb 2015 16:24 +0100, Florian Pritz wrote:
On 27.02.2015 15:23, Lukas Fleischer wrote:
On Fri, 27 Feb 2015 at 14:56:40, Dustin Falgout wrote: I prefer replacing the hard-coded categories with user-definable tags.
Shouldn't such tags be in the PKGBUILD and also be available in pacman for searching? That said you pretty much get all those features if you put hashtags (like on twitter) into the description of the package.
I believe categories should be set in the PKGBUILD and part of the package metadata.
I support Dustin Falgout's idea. I guess it is better to not banish
categories but just rename and delete those which seem awkward and
does not conform with common standards.
On Fri, Feb 27, 2015 at 2:56 PM, Dustin Falgout
Now that we have a patch to remove then, I guess it's time to decide if we'll remove them, or rename them once and for all.
IMHO, renaming them won't solve all of the issues. There's too many things that are ambiguous, but I'm willing to see a sample of suggested categories.
Cheers,
-- Hugo Osvaldo Barrera A: Because we read from top to bottom, left to right. Q: Why should I start my reply below the quoted text?
Well, I think the natural place to start is the freedesktop.org spec. I think it makes sense to use all the main categories[1] and then choose a few child categories from the Additional Categories[2] defined by the spec.
[1] http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/apa.html [2] http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/apas02.html
Cheers! Dustin
participants (6)
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Dustin Falgout
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Florian Pritz
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Gordian Edenhofer
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Hugo Osvaldo Barrera
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Loui Chang
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Lukas Fleischer