[gentoo-dev] RFC: Application name in metadata.xml

[gentoo-dev] RFC: Application name in metadata.xml

[Fabio Erculiani]

I think this is not the first time it's been discussed here, but maybe
I'm wrong.
Other distros associate a more user-friendly package name (application
name) to packages.
Say, they bind libreoffice-writer to "LibreOffice Writer" in package metadata.

How about expanding metadata.xml (adding to its .dtd) to also support this?
It would be nice to show this info in GUI package managers instead of
the actual, and ugly (for the newbies), CP or CPV.
It would be just a small addition that would make a big diff.

So?
-- 
Fabio Erculiani

Re: [gentoo-dev] RFC: Application name in metadata.xml

[Michał Górny]

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On Sat, 11 Feb 2012 14:00:38 +0100
Fabio Erculiani <lxnay@gentoo.org> wrote:

> I think this is not the first time it's been discussed here, but maybe
> I'm wrong.
> Other distros associate a more user-friendly package name (application
> name) to packages.
> Say, they bind libreoffice-writer to "LibreOffice Writer" in package
> metadata.
> 
> How about expanding metadata.xml (adding to its .dtd) to also support
> this? It would be nice to show this info in GUI package managers
> instead of the actual, and ugly (for the newbies), CP or CPV.
> It would be just a small addition that would make a big diff.

I think we already expand the name in DESCRIPTION whenever it is
ambiguous.

Could you please mention some Gentoo examples which would benefit from
the proposed change?

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny

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Re: [gentoo-dev] RFC: Application name in metadata.xml

[Fabio Erculiani]

On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 2:27 PM, Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Sat, 11 Feb 2012 14:00:38 +0100
> Fabio Erculiani <lxnay@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
>> I think this is not the first time it's been discussed here, but maybe
>> I'm wrong.
>> Other distros associate a more user-friendly package name (application
>> name) to packages.
>> Say, they bind libreoffice-writer to "LibreOffice Writer" in package
>> metadata.
>>
>> How about expanding metadata.xml (adding to its .dtd) to also support
>> this? It would be nice to show this info in GUI package managers
>> instead of the actual, and ugly (for the newbies), CP or CPV.
>> It would be just a small addition that would make a big diff.
>
> I think we already expand the name in DESCRIPTION whenever it is
> ambiguous.

DESCRIPTION != Application Name
Description is way too long, and sometimes, it even overflows 80 chars
limit (I recall there was a suggested limit for it, and it is 80 chars
-- that's why we have long-description in metadata.xml).

>
> Could you please mention some Gentoo examples which would benefit from
> the proposed change?

As I wrote, GUI Package Managers or Web frontends to Portage (package browsers).
Example image, taken from Ubuntu SC, showing application names:
http://cdn.omgubuntu.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Selection_008.jpeg

>
> --
> Best regards,
> Michał Górny


Cheers,
-- 
Fabio Erculiani

Re: [gentoo-dev] RFC: Application name in metadata.xml

[Ian Stakenvicius]

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On 11/02/12 08:27 AM, Michał Górny wrote:
> On Sat, 11 Feb 2012 14:00:38 +0100 Fabio Erculiani
> <lxnay@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 
>> I think this is not the first time it's been discussed here, but
>> maybe I'm wrong. Other distros associate a more user-friendly
>> package name (application name) to packages. Say, they bind
>> libreoffice-writer to "LibreOffice Writer" in package metadata.
>> 
>> How about expanding metadata.xml (adding to its .dtd) to also
>> support this? It would be nice to show this info in GUI package
>> managers instead of the actual, and ugly (for the newbies), CP or
>> CPV. It would be just a small addition that would make a big
>> diff.
> 
> I think we already expand the name in DESCRIPTION whenever it is 
> ambiguous.
> 
> Could you please mention some Gentoo examples which would benefit
> from the proposed change?
> 

I don't think it's about being unambiguous, I think it's about
providing a common language title for the package.  I could see this
as being something desirable for a portage gui or to add more
descriptive results to a search engine.

That said, I expect there would need to be a near-portage-wide
adoption of the new entry for this to be useful in either case, and I
don't see that happening...

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Re: [gentoo-dev] RFC: Application name in metadata.xml

[Fabian Groffen]

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On 11-02-2012 19:02:12 -0500, Ian Stakenvicius wrote:
> On Sat, 11 Feb 2012 14:00:38 +0100 Fabio Erculiani
> <lxnay@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> I think this is not the first time it's been discussed here, but
>> maybe I'm wrong. Other distros associate a more user-friendly
>> package name (application name) to packages. Say, they bind
>> libreoffice-writer to "LibreOffice Writer" in package metadata.
> 
> I don't think it's about being unambiguous, I think it's about
> providing a common language title for the package.  I could see this
> as being something desirable for a portage gui or to add more
> descriptive results to a search engine.
> 
> That said, I expect there would need to be a near-portage-wide
> adoption of the new entry for this to be useful in either case, and I
> don't see that happening...

I wonder if metadata.xml could be "regenerated" during rsync generation
to include this entry if not present yet.  It seems some simple rules
can just produce a large amount of "correct" entries, e.g.

mutt -> Mutt
exim -> Exim

And even not entirely correct, but still better:
libreoffice-writer -> Libreoffice Writer

Currently this is not possible (when Manifest is signed), since
metadata.xml is included in the Manifest.  However the thin manifest
approach might allow something like this.


-- 
Fabian Groffen
Gentoo on a different level

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Re: [gentoo-dev] RFC: Application name in metadata.xml

["Paweł Hajdan, Jr."]

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On 2/11/12 2:00 PM, Fabio Erculiani wrote:
> Other distros associate a more user-friendly package name (application
> name) to packages.
> Say, they bind libreoffice-writer to "LibreOffice Writer" in package metadata.
> 
> How about expanding metadata.xml (adding to its .dtd) to also support this?

I'm fine with this, but please make it unobtrusive (i.e. don't require
everyone to change their metadata.xml now).


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Re: [gentoo-dev] RFC: Application name in metadata.xml

[Ulrich Mueller]

>>>>> On Sun, 12 Feb 2012, Paweł Hajdan, wrote:

> On 2/11/12 2:00 PM, Fabio Erculiani wrote:
>> Other distros associate a more user-friendly package name
>> (application name) to packages.
>> Say, they bind libreoffice-writer to "LibreOffice Writer" in
>> package metadata.

[Replying to a random message in this thread.]

Why do you think that writing the package name in mixed case and with
embedded white space would be more "user friendly"?

>> How about expanding metadata.xml (adding to its .dtd) to also
>> support this?

I still don't see what this would buy us. So far we have a unique
identifier (namely ${CATEGORY}/${PN}) for our packages. Introducing
another name will water this down and cause confusion for users, in
the first place.

So, can you point out what are the advantages of your proposal?
Are they large enough to outweigh the confusion arising?

> I'm fine with this, but please make it unobtrusive (i.e. don't
> require everyone to change their metadata.xml now).

I'm not convinced that such info should be added to metadata at all.

Ulrich

Re: [gentoo-dev] RFC: Application name in metadata.xml

[Alexandre Rostovtsev]

On Sun, 2012-02-12 at 20:37 +0100, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> >>>>> On Sun, 12 Feb 2012, Paweł Hajdan, wrote:
> 
> > On 2/11/12 2:00 PM, Fabio Erculiani wrote:
> >> Other distros associate a more user-friendly package name
> >> (application name) to packages.
> >> Say, they bind libreoffice-writer to "LibreOffice Writer" in
> >> package metadata.
> 
> [Replying to a random message in this thread.]
> 
> Why do you think that writing the package name in mixed case and with
> embedded white space would be more "user friendly"?

because-removing-all-upper-case-spaces-and-punctuation-from-a-string
makes it less readable to a non-programmer.

> >> How about expanding metadata.xml (adding to its .dtd) to also
> >> support this?
> 
> I still don't see what this would buy us. So far we have a unique
> identifier (namely ${CATEGORY}/${PN}) for our packages. Introducing
> another name will water this down and cause confusion for users, in
> the first place.
> 
> So, can you point out what are the advantages of your proposal?
> Are they large enough to outweigh the confusion arising?

Users know a package's "natural name", not the occasionally cryptic
ebuild name, and certainly not the category. If I want to install a game
called "Neverwinter Nights", it may not be immediately apparent to me
that I should emerge something called "games-rpg/nwn".

Adding the natural name to metadata would allow users to more easily
find the packages they need via packages.gentoo.org and tools like eix.

-Alexandre

Re: [gentoo-dev] RFC: Application name in metadata.xml

[Michał Górny]

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On Sun, 12 Feb 2012 16:14:42 -0500
Alexandre Rostovtsev <tetromino@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On Sun, 2012-02-12 at 20:37 +0100, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> > >>>>> On Sun, 12 Feb 2012, Paweł Hajdan, wrote:
> > 
> > > On 2/11/12 2:00 PM, Fabio Erculiani wrote:
> > >> Other distros associate a more user-friendly package name
> > >> (application name) to packages.
> > >> Say, they bind libreoffice-writer to "LibreOffice Writer" in
> > >> package metadata.
> > 
> > [Replying to a random message in this thread.]
> > 
> > Why do you think that writing the package name in mixed case and
> > with embedded white space would be more "user friendly"?
> 
> because-removing-all-upper-case-spaces-and-punctuation-from-a-string
> makes it less readable to a non-programmer.
> 
> > >> How about expanding metadata.xml (adding to its .dtd) to also
> > >> support this?
> > 
> > I still don't see what this would buy us. So far we have a unique
> > identifier (namely ${CATEGORY}/${PN}) for our packages. Introducing
> > another name will water this down and cause confusion for users, in
> > the first place.
> > 
> > So, can you point out what are the advantages of your proposal?
> > Are they large enough to outweigh the confusion arising?
> 
> Users know a package's "natural name", not the occasionally cryptic
> ebuild name, and certainly not the category. If I want to install a
> game called "Neverwinter Nights", it may not be immediately apparent
> to me that I should emerge something called "games-rpg/nwn".
> 
> Adding the natural name to metadata would allow users to more easily
> find the packages they need via packages.gentoo.org and tools like
> eix.

And make it less possible that users will actually report a bug
and suggest changing the package name to a less ambiguous one.

And AFAICS there's no 'nwn' in SRC_URI so it's just pointless to
abbreviate the name like that in our ebuild name.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny

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Re: [gentoo-dev] RFC: Application name in metadata.xml

[Alexandre Rostovtsev]

On Sun, 2012-02-12 at 22:22 +0100, Michał Górny wrote:
> And AFAICS there's no 'nwn' in SRC_URI so it's just pointless to
> abbreviate the name like that in our ebuild name.

"nwn" is the name of the game's main executable and the standard
abbreviation for Neverwinter Nights in the rpg community.

-Alexandre.

Re: [gentoo-dev] RFC: Application name in metadata.xml

[James Broadhead]

On 12 February 2012 21:34, Alexandre Rostovtsev <tetromino@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Sun, 2012-02-12 at 22:22 +0100, Michał Górny wrote:
>> And AFAICS there's no 'nwn' in SRC_URI so it's just pointless to
>> abbreviate the name like that in our ebuild name.
>
> "nwn" is the name of the game's main executable and the standard
> abbreviation for Neverwinter Nights in the rpg community.
>

The use of package names which are the same as the executable names is
a great feature of the portage tree.

Re: [gentoo-dev] RFC: Application name in metadata.xml

[Thomas Sachau]

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Alexandre Rostovtsev schrieb:
> Users know a package's "natural name", not the occasionally cryptic
> ebuild name, and certainly not the category. If I want to install a game
> called "Neverwinter Nights", it may not be immediately apparent to me
> that I should emerge something called "games-rpg/nwn".
> 
> Adding the natural name to metadata would allow users to more easily
> find the packages they need via packages.gentoo.org and tools like eix.
> 
> -Alexandre
> 
> 
> 

If people have to look into a file to find a name for a package
different from the package name, they can also directly look into the
ebuild or, even more simple, just use the search ability of portage or
other tools, which are able to search the DESCRIPTION.

So if package name really differs from the ebuild name, put it into the
description and you can find the package with portage or tools like.....
eix ;-)

If you really, for whatever reasons, dont want to place it into
DESCRIPTION, metadata.xml already has longdescription. If you place the
full natural name of the package into that field together with an
extended description, i am pretty sure, that noone will complain.

So from my point of view, i currently dont see any need for a special
field in metadata.xml to specify the natural name of a package.

-- 

Thomas Sachau
Gentoo Linux Developer


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Re: [gentoo-dev] RFC: Application name in metadata.xml

[Markos Chandras]

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Hash: SHA512

On 02/13/2012 12:42 AM, Thomas Sachau wrote:
> Alexandre Rostovtsev schrieb:
>> Users know a package's "natural name", not the occasionally
>> cryptic ebuild name, and certainly not the category. If I want to
>> install a game called "Neverwinter Nights", it may not be
>> immediately apparent to me that I should emerge something called
>> "games-rpg/nwn".
>> 
>> Adding the natural name to metadata would allow users to more
>> easily find the packages they need via packages.gentoo.org and
>> tools like eix.
>> 
>> -Alexandre
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> If people have to look into a file to find a name for a package 
> different from the package name, they can also directly look into
> the ebuild or, even more simple, just use the search ability of
> portage or other tools, which are able to search the DESCRIPTION.
> 
> So if package name really differs from the ebuild name, put it into
> the description and you can find the package with portage or tools
> like..... eix ;-)
> 
> If you really, for whatever reasons, dont want to place it into 
> DESCRIPTION, metadata.xml already has longdescription. If you place
> the full natural name of the package into that field together with
> an extended description, i am pretty sure, that noone will
> complain.
> 
> So from my point of view, i currently dont see any need for a
> special field in metadata.xml to specify the natural name of a
> package.
> 
This field wont be useful to users but to GUI applications that want
to show a pretty name instead of a weird PN. It would be fully
optional but it would have a standard syntax. You can't use
<longdesription> for that to extract the real package name because
each developer use this tag in a different way. Same for description.
The proposed tag would have a single strict syntax, that is a single
string just for the real package name so it would be easily
extractable. And of course it would be fully optional. After all, it
is just an addition in metadata.dtd

- -- 
Regards,
Markos Chandras / Gentoo Linux Developer / Key ID: B4AFF2C2
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Re: [gentoo-dev] RFC: Application name in metadata.xml

[Fabio Erculiani]

Markos,
there are also webapps.

-- 
Fabio Erculiani
http://lxnay.com

Re: [gentoo-dev] RFC: Application name in metadata.xml

[Kent Fredric]

On 13 February 2012 21:35, Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:
> This field wont be useful to users but to GUI applications that want
> to show a pretty name instead of a weird PN. It would be fully
> optional but it would have a standard syntax. You can't use
> <longdesription> for that to extract the real package name because
> each developer use this tag in a different way. Same for description.
> The proposed tag would have a single strict syntax, that is a single
> string just for the real package name so it would be easily
> extractable. And of course it would be fully optional. After all, it
> is just an addition in metadata.dtd
>


I think it makes sense to also support there being multiple fields of
this kind, because packages like libreoffice bundle multiple
applications in the one.

I'd propose a structure like

<provides>
   <application name="Libreoffice Writer" binary="lowriter"
description="A Word processing tool">
   </application>
   ....
</provides>


You could have a proviso somewhere for multiple provides sections and
each section being dependent on some atom match, but I think that's
really over-engineering it.

I thought about putting in stuff to allow for extra metadata for
aliases and such to relate to what people are really looking for ( ie:
people who are still wanting openoffice should get given libreoffice
as a result ) but also smells of over-engineering and nasty messes.

-- 
Kent

perl -e  "print substr( \"edrgmaM  SPA NOcomil.ic\\@tfrken\", \$_ * 3,
3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 );"

Re: [gentoo-dev] RFC: Application name in metadata.xml

[Luca Barbato]

On 2/11/12 2:00 PM, Fabio Erculiani wrote:
> I think this is not the first time it's been discussed here, but maybe
> I'm wrong.
> Other distros associate a more user-friendly package name (application
> name) to packages.
> Say, they bind libreoffice-writer to "LibreOffice Writer" in package metadata.
>
> How about expanding metadata.xml (adding to its .dtd) to also support this?
> It would be nice to show this info in GUI package managers instead of
> the actual, and ugly (for the newbies), CP or CPV.
> It would be just a small addition that would make a big diff.
>
> So?

Let's do that.

lu