--- Stephane Gourichon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > In previous releases (7.1 I think) there was a > primitive rpmdrake tool, > that allowed an interesting feature, though it was > not intended by the > developper, and disappeared in the 8.x.
Another thing that disappeared was a streamlined MandrakeUpdate tool. I haven't tried the new rpmdrake tho. > Imagine you were looking for, say, an xfig > replacement. You would search > for xfig. In 7.1 the search engine highlighted xfig > *in its category*. > Then, you just had to look at xfig's neighbours in > the category to find > similar programs. > > In 8.x the same search returns only programs that > contains "xfig" in a > separate list. (This list is good because you can > select several > packages at once.) But you lost the ability to > browse the category. > > Still, the categories exist (they existed in RedHat > 4 and probably even > before), but you can't take advantage of them in the > 8.x rpmdrake. Why don't we go back to using the RPM builtin categories in DrakX instead of having them be different and stored somewhere else? > * When this becomes a suggestion of improvement: > > To continue with the xfig example, I know that you > can look for "vector > drawing" or the like, but sometimes you know a > program that is similar > to the one you're looking for, but you don't know > what keywords to use. > (Or the keyword is too vague, like "network" of > "font" so you have tons > of irrelevant results.) > > The improvement could take the form of a button (or > contextual menu) > that says "jump to the category where this package > belongs". > > So, you search "xfig". The xfig package is selected. > You click "jump to > category" and voil�, you have sodipodi. (There may > be some more relevant > examples). Are there any other apps like xfig? I need to know for work :o) > * And in your wildest dreams: > > The essence of this idea is to take advantage of the > neighbourhood > relationship between packages, instead of merely a > keyword-based > matching. > > This is already what you do in a file manager when > you use > sort-by-name/date/size. > > The idea is to add to the "sort" criteria more > similarity criteria: > function (vector drawing), environment > (KDE/Gnome/...), dependencies > (qt,xml,...) to jump and/or filter. > > In a dream you could imagine an interface like in > http://kartoo.com/ > > There are researches about "self-organized maps" > (SOM) where some may > take inspiration. > > > * Conclusion > > When the number of packages in a distribution > becomes very large, what > you actually need is a package search engine. Also with it being very large, the way DrakX does categories is unmaintainable. In fact, I don't think we've *ever* had all the packages categorized. Whereas they have to be in a category just being an RPM, so it seems like that's the more maintainable solution. > And a good search engine tries hard to take all > available information to > focus on relevant answers and provide easy ways to > navigate and refine > the query. That's what Google does. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs http://www.hotjobs.com
