Hello list, Some weeks ago I had a conversation on #opensuse-project (on irc.freenode.net) about a new project started by me called "Pakanto" (http://pakanto.org) - a new project dedicated for creating better package descriptions for today's Linux/Unix package management systems (so it is not about inventing yet another packaging system ;-). On IRC people liked he idea in principle but also had some concerns mainly because they misunderstood the project scope "oh yet another online wiki project" and were also a little bit sceptic towards the software I am using: MediaWiki.
Thus I am writing to this list (please direct me to the right one if it is not) in order to adress some usability problems of packaging and my proposed solution. The current state: In case you search (for example in YaST) for functionality (e.g. "web browser") not application names (e.g. "Konqueror") on your Linux distro of choice software package descriptions are the foundation of modern package management software (like Yum, YaST, urpmi, Adept, emerge...). Why so? If the software package descriptions are poor quality the best search algorithm can't do much. So if you search for functionality and not application names there it is crucial to have localised (who knows that the German "Textverarbeitung" is equivalent to "office" or "word processor") and non-geeky package descriptions like funny geek texts in the quality of "Less is More" or "Elinks is an improved version of Links". If you understand these texts you don't need a description at all... Current package description i18n systems (for example in Debian but I am sure Suse has something like this too and I was told on IRC that there is some kind of collaborative web interface for package descriptions in Suse) are modeled like translation of UI strings of Linux software: The english text is "the law" and cannot be changed (within the same tool and same procedures) and the translations get derived from it. The problem is: If the english text is crap the translation is wasted time. That's currently a problem with package descriptions. English package descriptions arent that helpful for average people and so translating them won't improve anything for end users. That's why I came to the idea of the Pakanto wiki for writing these package descriptions. A wiki gets used for parallel editing (the german version can be written previous to the english one for example) and not strict translation - you only aim at equivalency. And of course it is much more easier and open (!) than a custom web translation interface and bugzilla... So the Pakanto wiki will not be an online knowledge base like Wikipedia but a platform for writing package descriptions that can be embedded for offline usage in current software packages without changing the package management software at all (but you could enhance the software as a result to the improved posibilities provided by Pakanto). Long story short here are some links how it works in detail (and what still needs to be done ;-): http://pakanto.org/wiki/Pakanto:Main_Page http://pakanto.org/wiki/Category:Packages http://pakanto.org/wiki/Pakanto:Project_scope http://pakanto.org/wiki/Pakanto:About http://pakanto.org/wiki/Pakanto:Licensing_requirements http://pakanto.org/wiki/Pakanto:TODO_list The project is work in progress as everything and so I'd be really interested in some feedback about it. As well I'd be interested to know how the i18n of package descriptions was done in YaST (as it is AFAIK not part of the regular RPM itself). Cheers, Daniel Arnold / Arnomane --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
