Tag reorganization proposal: devel::*

[Peter Rockai]

On Thu, Jun 29, 2006 at 07:57:50PM +0200, Benjamin Mesing wrote:
> Hello,
Hi,

To come up with a proposal to solve the conflict:
devel -- Software Development
devel-language -- Target Language
implemented-in -- Implementation Language

I know that "Target Language" in itself is not *too* informative, but most of
the time, you will see it in context of a tag, which means like
Target Language: C++
which makes it much clearer, i believe. And the user should have long facet
and tag descirptions at hand as well (eg. in a tooltip), so it's not hard to
learn what it means and shouldn't be hard to remember either i hope.


> > There's still the idea of moving devel::lang:* into a separate facet,
> > but no consensus yet on the name of the other facet:
> I do not think that's a good idea. The language you are planning to
> develop in, is information needed only when doing to software
> development. So it would be devel::c++, devel::java,.... Now, the
> beloved grouping comes into the game and we get
> devel::lang-or-what-ever-name-here:{c++,java}. So I would vote for
> leaving it as it is.

The problem with this is, that the development language and how the package
fits within development are completely orthogonal properties. And orthogonal
properties belong to different facets. Right now, devel::lang: works as a
facet in itself, but this fact is not recognized at the vocabulary level.

Right now, the devel facet could be described as "how package relates to
development and development language" which is a good indication of the fact
it should be split.


It is true that we have difficulty with coming up with a non-clashing name,
because we are trying to express things about same thing from different point
of view -- specifically programming language used to create the package and
programming language the package is useful with. First, they often coincide,
second, they talk about same set of objects. The distinction is indeed hard to
capture in 2 or 3 words. You "work around" the problem by using groups and
just assign name "Software Development - Language" to "what language is this
useful with".

(Let's also note, that the interface should not present things like Target
Language until it is semi-clear that the package set searched in is mostly
concerned with development. Discussed in another thread.)

Yours, Peter.

-- 
Peter Rockai | me()mornfall!net | prockai()redhat!com
   http://blog.mornfall.net | http://web.mornfall.net

"In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be
 indented six feet downward and covered with dirt."
     -- Blair P. Houghton on the subject of C program indentation