[Debtags-devel] Merging admin, devel, langdevel and game into use (was: Proposed Debtags goals for Etch)

[Peter Rockai (mornfall)]

On Friday 22 July 2005 18:11, Enrico Zini wrote:
> [Note: I'm replying many mails at once, heavily reorganising the quote
>  to put the various subtopics together, and splitting the result in
>  different replies to start distinct subthreads.]
>
> On Mon, Jul 18, 2005 at 09:52:51AM +0200, Benjamin Mesing wrote:
> > Uhh, and btw. admin seems to be a subcategory of use, doesn't it?
>
> Yes, and so would be devel and game.  Also, langdevel could end up under
> use::devel-lang-*.
>
> I'm not in principle against this big merge, but I want to call the
> attention on user interfaces for a moment: multi-level popup menus are
> already hard to manipulate with the 2-level facet/tag organization, and
> will get unusable if we go 3, 4 or 5 levels with lots of tags.
I for one thing that menus suck for this kind of thing... Anyway, the UI i'll 
try to implement in ept (kde frontend based on libapt-front) is along those 
lines:

Left side has a sidebar which can be hidden and switched to different modes; 
one of the modes would be a "debtags filter", which would be the sidebar 
split into two parts, the actual filter in effect and the available tags 
below, both presented as a tree view of [+] facet which expands into tags. 
You would be able to add a tag into the filter using a context menu or 
dragging it to the filter area. However, i'm not completely sure about 
clicking "add" in context menu recomputing the list of available tags is all 
that good idea...

Also, tagging packages could be done with dragging the packages and dropping 
them onto a tag, in addition to a context menu. However, since the tree view 
of available tags shows the tags reasonable if you are searching for a 
package, another mode of the sidebar would show tags reasonable for tagging.

Another sidebar mode would be probably used for non-debtags searches 
(description, etc). I think the shown packages will be persistent, in that 
you can refine the view by further filtering and the current filter setup 
should be shown all the time (and possibly it should be able to save it). You 
should be able to drop individual filters easily (like with debtags-edit). 
Those filters that require you to fill in some field should work 
interactively, too (it takes effect immediately you write something and then 
you can clear/apply to go back or to stay there).

I'll ponder more and tell you if i think out something :-).

>
> For this reason I feel like holding this merge, and all merges that
> would lead to 3 levels of nesting for tags, until someone brings new
> user interface ideas.
Still, i am not sure to like this... It will probably lead to problems 
described in my other mail (things fitting into 2 categories at once in the 
nesting hierarchy). We absolutely need to reduce the number of things 
presented at once but we know hierarchies don't scale -- the depth kills ease 
of navigation faster than width.
>
> And, by all means, please let's do some brainstorming and prototyping
> here: it's one of the mostly needed items right now.
>
>
> Ciao,
>
> Enrico
>

Open for discussion, too :-). Yours,
    Peter.

-- 
Peter Rockai | me()mornfall!net | prockai()redhat!com | +421907533216 
   http://blog.mornfall.net | http://web.mornfall.net

"In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be
 indented six feet downward and covered with dirt."
     -- Blair P. Houghton on the subject of C program indentation