[Debtags-devel] Re: Recent progress

[Erich Schubert]

Hi,

> Erich, do you feel that keeping the vocabulary flexible
> poses insurmountable practical difficulties within the
> existing system?

The vocabulary is a moving target currently. The problem is, unless we
kind of make a "stable release" of the vocabulary, we will have
trouble getting it adopted. Also, like Herve pointed out, we need
version tracking if we have the vocabulary change too often. If we had
like one vocabulary for sarge, and then the next one for etch, that
would be much less of a problem.

I believe that if we make a really good vocabulary now for the first
"official" release we will do fine for a long time. The changes that
come first will probably be limited to a small audience.
For example, we are currently missing "mono" tags (I have them in my
local vocabulary already, implemented-in::csharp and
langdevel::csharp).
But adding those tags is not much of an issue: the scope is clearly
cut, and when the need for a new tag arises, often none of the
existing packages will need to be changed.
In the mono-case it is for example only necessary to search for
packages that somehow depend onto the mono runtimes, and tag these.

>   (b) tag most of the archive to the point where debtags
>   is really practically useful,

and (c) a system where changes to the vocabulary are kept low (in
number of batches), to avoid them re-checking tags all the time

> By the way, who of us will go to Debconf in Finland in
> July?  (If I can find airfare within my budget, I mean
> to go this year.)

I want to, but I'm having a tight schedule.
I'm currently in Berkeley, CA, USA. My visa is valid till 10th of
July, so I cannot re-enter after that date, but I can stay longer.
Debconf is 10th-18th July, and 1st-5th August is the Extreme Markup
Languages conference in Canada. I could save a lot of money by staying
in the US and Canada for the meantime, and not going to Debconf. :-(
And starting 6th of August I have a workshop week back in Germany, but
I guess I can't go there, with Jetlag and such.

I'm currently considering writing a new web tagging application that
makes heavy use of the "new" javascript-xml-async-technologies (like
gmail, maps.google.com etc.) - what do you think? I will only be able
to do this for gecko-based browsers...

Greetings,
Erich Schubert
--
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