Re: Two new "categories" created. Comment needed

[Harold L Hunt II <huntharo at msu dot edu>]

Igor Pechtchanski wrote:

> On Wed, 7 Apr 2004, Christopher Faylor wrote:
>
>
> > Harold Hunt has just, without any discussion here, created two new
> > categories.  One is understandable and probably doesn't require
> > discussion.
> >
> > He's changed XFree86 to X11.  Oddly enough, XFree86 isn't currently
> > listed as a category in setup.html so I've added X11 to the list
> > of supported packages.
>
>
> I think this is a good idea, as long as every package that uses X is in
> that category.  This includes, IMO, things like "grace", "emacs", "xfig",
> etc.  I'd also put "ghostscript-x11" there if it isn't already.

Already done:

find -name "*.hint" | xargs sed -i -e 
"s/^\(category:.*\)XFree86\(.*\)/\1X11\2/"

Note to all X package maintainers: modify your setup.hint source files 
and change catgory "XFree86" to "X11" so that you don't accidentally 
revert this change on your next upload.

> > The other, more controversial addition is ZZZRemovedPackages.
> >
> > Harold has moved older XFree86 stuff into this directory.
> >
> > Does anyone have a problem with this new category?  I think it's
> > obvious what it is used for.  The question is does it serve a
> > useful purpose?  Is the name sufficiently clear?  Does it
> > cause any side effects that may not be immediately obvious?
> >
> > If it is decided that this is a good thing then it needs to
> > be documented.
> >
> > cgf
>
>
> I believe it's a good idea to have something like it.  A few comments,
> though...  First, I don't like the "ZZZ" prefix -- we can probably use
> some non-alphanumeric character that succeeds 'z' in the collation order,
> e.g., "_".

I don't care what it is as long as it shows up at the bottom of the 
category list.

We can change it easily enough at any time with a simple script, since I 
have put all such packages in a single top-level directory: 
release/ZZZRemovedPackages.

Of course, it would make sense to rename the directory if we rename the 
category...

> Second, it should be made clear in the documentation that no
> new package should have that category, unless it's an upgrade helper
> package.

Heh heh... you'd think package creators would figure that out, but best 
not to leave it unsaid.

> And third, it would be useful if the removed packages kept their
> original categories, with this one prepended to the list (so that it would
> always be seen in the "Categories" column in all of the views).

I *strongly* disagree.  The main reason I created this category was that 
people couldn't see the short description of a removed package or were 
not reading it (partly due to setup.exe not being resizeable), so they 
were trying to install removed packages and complaining that they didn't 
gain anything from installing that package.

I don't want these packages showing up in their original categories 
because they are just clutter.

If you have a very strong reason for why this is necessary, lets here it.

> Not as important, but we can also shorten it to "_Removed" or something.

Well, I debated shortness vs. being absolutely clear with the name.  I 
don't see a reason to not have "Packages" on the end, as it fits just 
fine in all displays that I've seen it on so far.

Harold