ac-archive: classic format

[Guido Draheim]

The instantiation of free classications on ac macros in the
ac-archive is a good approach, I was always interested in
being able to discriminate ac-macros in multiple ways but
the current repository and submission format was not
suited very well for that.

The xml format is surely not easy for users to handle
directly, and the processing in the gnu ac-archive
seems to be using tools that are not usually present
on user systems (some 'ghc' I have not have heard of,
the makesystem resources are currently not present
anymore in the savannah cvs). That makes it not easy
to format/preview macros locally on a user system.

I would like to attempt to define an extension to the
classic format that allows to classify macros in
multiple ways. We should here follow the classic format
as close as possibly and invent a new tex-like setting,
something like

@category Installed Packages, experimental

The point is just to get a list of proposed category
types that submitters shall pick from - reading and
formatting such a classic format can be done as simple
as with a perl macro like it is done in the sfnet
branch using macro2html.pl. Peter Simon did already
propose a very good choice which matches the current
situation of the ac-archive:

> As for the new categorization ... Currently we have these:
>
>     C Support
>         Properties of the C compiler.
>
>     C++ Support
>         Properties of the C++ compiler.
>
>     Java Support
>         Properties of the Java Environment.
>
>     Cross Compilation
>         Really advanced stuff.
>
>     Installed Packages
>         How to I link OpenGL? Where are the header files? And while
>         we're at it ... What is OpenGL?
>
>     Miscellaneous
>         Catch all
>
> New ones that I would consider to be useful are:
>
>     System Headers
>         Tests for the existence of "foobar.h", or whether it defines
>         "foo_bar_t" or not, etc.
>
>     System Utilities
>         Does the "foo" program support the "--bar" flag? Is it
>         installed at all? What version of the Intel C++ compiler do I
>         have?
>
>     Build Infrastructure
>         Generate a "foobar-config" script, cool Autoconf extensions,
>         etc. 

Adding to that "topic" categorization, I would like to see
status types
   experimental
   updated
   reviewed
   ubiquitous

comments? proposals? critics?

-- cheers, guido