On Sun, 2005-01-16 at 09:25 -0500, Dan Meltzer wrote: > I Tend to feel that the use flags are necessary, and heres a bit of an > example. > > The English Language has millions of words in it, yet people never > complain that there are too many. Why? Because they only use the ones > they need, the same should be true with use flags. > > The only improvement I could envision would be a "Use dictionary" that > was on the site, and allowed people to use some sort of advanced > search tool to find the use flags they wanted.
To go with your comparison (which is on a lot of respects not very correct), then Gentoo is becoming more and more of a scientific paper presented to a regular high-schooler, full of words and phrases it doesn't even comprehend, let alone he/she can say a sensible thing about afterwards. As you say the english language has a lot of words (but i doubt it comes even close to a million), yet people are known to only use a few thousand regular. There is little point in adding words that won't get used besides a select few if you want to make your text accessible to everyone. > Also maybe standardize when useflags should be used, and how they > should be used, put together a GLEP for Use naming standards, and go > from there? Maybe this would solve some of everyones problems. Oh yes, I'm all for some refactoring or redefining what USE flags to use and it would go a long way in helping out the problem. But that is part of a bigger picture, just like this is also a part where USE flags sometimes get added too easily. Contrary to popular believe I'm not against adding USE flags or anything, but I do say that it should be more carefully approached than is often done now. - foser
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