On Wednesday 01 October 2003 10:19, Buchan Milne wrote:
> What do you need a "graphical database" for? Do you mean
> screenshots? Do you know how big a set of screenshots would be
> for all the applications in contrib? In some cases a single
> screenshot could be larger than the whole package!! IMHO you
> only need this if you are actually *selling* applications
> (like Lindows). It may be worthwhile for the proprietary stuff
> in MandrakeClub, but quite pointless for contrib, especially
> considering the rate at which screenshots get obsoleted ...
That's funny, I was thinking of starting up a "drakshots" site
and slowly building up a collection of screenshots to be added
to some future urpmi manager. I don't think you need to have a
screenshot for every package, not even the graphical ones
(Lindows certainly doesn't, nor do sites like freshmeat), nor do
I think you need to exclude cooker or plf apps. Maybe the
answer is to have the urpmi manager only retrieve the screenshot
from some website if the user is connected to the net at the
time and views the description for longer than a couple seconds
(to reduce load on the server for when a user scrolls through
the list.) I'm thinking something like
package-name/
screenshot1.png (default screenshot for package)
1.01/ (directory containing screenshots from specific version)
and having the program tell the site what package and version
it's looking for, and deliver the most recent screenshot that's
older than the package, or the default screenshot (probably the
most recent) if there is none.
I think Mandrake *is* selling the wide variety of packages you
can install with one click, just not as a separate service from
the distribution itself. My partner George (who has been using
Linux for a little over a year now) laments that there's nowhere
to go like those Windows shareware sites to find new software
for Linux. I tell him about rpmdrake, but without screenshots
most packages don't mean anything to him. I would tell him
about the freshmeat kind of sites, but George thinks console
windows are error messages, as most ex-Windows-users do, and
will not be downloading and compiling any tarballs. That is the
kind of user who needs screenshots, and that's the kind of user
Mandrake could steal back from Lindows if rpmdrake had some
screenshots.
I wasn't going to say anything till I've actually written the
code for drakshots (nor have I registered the domain) but then I
saw this post by accident and had to respond. I'm pretty
serious about it, and if someone decides Mandrake's software
installation tools will never have screenshots, I'll be writing
my own urpmi frontend that does.
Rob
