[proposal] Simplified junior tags & debtags-based replacement for metapackages

[Ben Armstrong]

For the benefit of debian-custom, which I have just CC'd because my
rather limited audience on the debtags and jr lists is being mighty
quiet about this topic, I'll bring you up to speed on what the following
is about.

This month, I've put some effort into planning to use debtags to
classify Debian Jr. software.  The junior-* metapackages, which I think
are flawed in a number of ways, could be totally replaced with a
debtags-based package selection method.  The package names themselves
are already expressed in existing non-junior-specific debtags to
differentiate between, say, arcade games and tools for writing.  Debian
Jr.'s own classification would then be focused on two basic aspects:

1. what's in the core of Debian Jr. vs. what's extra
2. what ages the software appeals to

I had previously proposed:

On Sun, 2006-02-19 at 15:43 -0400, Ben Armstrong wrote:
> Re-reading the debtags doc, it occurs to me that early is not mutually
> exclusive with core & extra, so it doesn't belong here.  Perhaps what we
> really need is:
> 
> junior::priority::core
> junior::priority::extra

I'm wondering if other CDDs may wish to do something similar.  If so, it
would be useful to have a "cdd::" aspect to differentiate between
different groups of packages within the cdd.  Thus, dropping 'priority'
because I don't think it adds much, we might tag every package in Debian
Jr. with:

cdd::junior::core
cdd::junior::extra

> and
> 
> junior::level::early
> (though we'd need some more levels in there to make a complete category)

I had previously expressed a desire to stay away from grade-specific and
age-specific language, but after searching for alternative language and
coming up empty, I'm resigned now to using age ranges as the best way to
express this idea of "level".  Also, I don't think this classification
belongs in "junior::".  It's an aspect of the software itself, not of
the Debian jr. project, even though the Debian jr. project will take a
hand in supplying these tags. 

I think the top-level aspect should be "audience::" (as in MARC audience
level) and we need to further differentiate between "interest age" and
other possible subclassifications (e.g. "reading grade" in a school
system) that, although not currently interesting to Debian Jr., might be
interesting to other Debian developers and users (e.g. debian-edu, which
I have just added to the CC).

These age ranges are roughly based on Piaget's stages of cognitive
development.  I gave up on names to describe these age ranges, because
there simply aren't any clearly-defined and widely used terms in the
English language for each age range.

audience::interest-age::0to2  (sensorimotor stage: keyboard-bangers, etc)
audience::interest-age::2to4  (early preoperational thought: simple toys, short attention span)
audience::interest-age::4to7  (later preoperational thought: more creative toys/games, longer attention span)
audience::interest-age::7to11  (concrete operations: more emphasis on reading, more complex UI)
audience::interest-age::11to15 (formal operations: requires abstract thinking)
audience::interest-age::adult

Comments?  Suggestions?  Rotten tomatoes?

Ben