[aur-dev] AUR Variable Names

[Callan Barrett]

I'd like some suggestions on how we deal with the issue of this:
http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?do_Details=1&ID=6978&O=0&L=&C=&K=&SB=&SO=&PP=&do_MyPackages=&do_Orphans=&SeB=

I've seen suggestions of mod_rewrite but really nothing further, I'll
start us off but I really want opinions from at least a few different
people. To begin I'm not really thrilled with the idea of mod_rewrite
at all and I can't find much of a point to using it, I've been told it
will be amazing because then we can have urls like /search/foo/ but so
what? People don't search using urls they search with the search form
and the fact we can start going /package/1337/ instead of say
packages.php?id=1337 is so incredibly minor why should we bother?

I propose that at the very least (that is even if we decide to use
mod_rewrite for some crazy reason) we change the variable names to
something that's actually descriptive and try get rid of as many
variables as possible. If you take a look at tardo's repo you can see
the details page now only requires the package id variable and nothing
else which is a great step in the right direction, we can also get rid
of the sorting options in the search form because you can already sort
via the links in column names and the variables do_Search is just as
pointless as do_Details. With just these changes we get something like
O=0&L=&C=&K=&PP=&SeB= which we could probably make even smaller and
nicer if we changed variable names to be descriptive.

Anyway, most of all I want to hear what other people have to say about
this because I think choosing the right names and issues like
backwards compatibility are pretty important.

-- 
Callan 'wizzomafizzo' Barrett