vocabulary structure

[Justin B Rye]

Peter Rockai wrote:
> There are some things bothering me about current vocabulary. One
> of them is the devel::lang: and made-of:: stuff. The
> made-of::<language> should probably go away for all
> turing-complete programming languages and be replaced with
> made-of::source-code.  devel::lang: should be just ripped out.

At present, the made-of::lang and devel::lang facets give two
different kinds of information.  It's possible (and informative) for
a package to be tagged "made-of::lang:c, devel::lang:python" or
vice-versa.

> To specify language, a new facet could be created, like language::
> (description Programming Language?).

Or you could call the facet "implemented-in::", which is what it was
called this time last year.  The facet name "language::" would just
make it even harder to find the locale facet (IMHO mis-)labelled
"culture::".

> The cases where a package contains source code in language A but
> is primarily useful with language B can be handled by tagging with
> both language::A and language::B. The idea is that if it's written
> in A, it can be useful for A coders anyway -- studying code,
> reusing, etc... 

As an administrator, I would prefer to apt-get a bandwidth-monitor
made-of: C to one made-of: PHP.  But meanwhile I avoid everything
under devel: because I'm not a programmer.  To me, this looks like a
very bad idea.

Besides, if I install a utility under the impression that it's going
to be useful for C coding and then discover that no, it's only
*implemented* in C, how am I meant to "reuse" the compiled binary?

> So the language:: facet would go like "useful for coders in a
> given language". 

A special-interest facet which belongs under "devel::".

> As for rest of made-of, there's only data:*, so made-of::data and
> format:: (File Format) facet would be probably a good idea again.

Why exactly is it better to have a cluttered top level?

> There are tags like role::content:data and i would vote for
> works-with::{audio,video,text,image,database,archive,font,...} all
> of which would hint the package could be tagged with a format::
> tag as well (not always, but it would often make sense).

I'm not sure I follow, but you're sounding more plausible.

> Actually, made-of:: can have the same above structure.
> Specifically, if the semantics of "made-of" are "primary
> content", then it's not likely that we will have the "works-with
> but also made-of", and even if we do, it will be probably the case
> that the package works with same things that it's made of.

Ditto.

> The other option is to double the format facet, but it doesn't
> make too much sense IMO. We can always fix it if it turns out to
> be a problem, so i vote on keeping it simple. 

"Double" in what sense?
 
> That's about the ideas for now, i will probably have some more
> thoughts on this matter.

Don't let my criticisms stop you.

> If noone steps up, i will start to migrate things to a scheme like
> this in a few days.

Please don't throw out the made-of::lang/devel::lang distinction.

> PS: You may have noticed that i did a biggish description cleanup,
> so if i broke something please step up.

To be honest it's quite a while since I did any tagging myself -
there's not much point using debtags-edit on my Sarge desktop, and
the Etch version was hopelessly slow on my testbed machine.  (Oh,
but now that I check it again it seems to have improved.)
-- 
JBR
Ankh kak! (Ancient Egyptian blessing)