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Re: A proposal for a friendlier Emacs
From: |
Alexander Adolf |
Subject: |
Re: A proposal for a friendlier Emacs |
Date: |
Fri, 25 Sep 2020 16:43:44 +0200 |
Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> [...]
> Thanks, but I think we may be miscommunicating. A package can belong
> to more than one category -- what do you propose to do in that case?
Let it have one and only one category, and as many tags as the package's
author wishes.
To my experience, whenever people say "I need more than one category",
the motivation is always to enable users to find the thing under several
search terms. Something which is conveniently achieved by
tags. Technically, the only difference between "category" and "tag" in
my proposal is that special semantics are attached to the "category"
(determines which init file stuff goes into), whereas no semantics are
attached to "tag". When searching, a package hosting website (or a
client thereof) would of course match on both, categories and tags.
Also, classifications (like ontologies in general) are not
context-free. In a wider context, such as e.g. Emacs, the
classifications "email", and "web" might be useful. In a list of
web-browser plugins, a "web" category would hardly make sense. Likewise
for "email" in a list of plugins for an email client.
By means of example, below a random short-list of packages on ELPA, with
fictional category, and tags assigned by my humble self:
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
package category tags
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
ada-mode progn ada, programming, fontification, navigation,
indentation
adaptive-wrap text wrap, visual, long-lines
arbitools games chess, tournamet, report, logging
wpuzzle games text, puzzle, scarbble, words
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Searching for "text" in this set, would deliver adaptive-wrap, and
wpuzzle as the results.
And yes, assigning a single category only to a non-trivial thing is
essentially an arbitrary act. Think of when you last browsed archives of
TV or cinematic content on different platforms. One and the same piece
of content goes down as "romance" on one platform, and as "comedy" on
another one. Hence, again to my experience, it is pointless to let a
community choose the category; the discussion will never end. Let
someone who can claim some sort of authority over the thing (e.g. its
author, or its publisher) take his/her arbitrary decision what the
category is.
Cheers,
--alexander
- Re: A proposal for a friendlier Emacs, (continued)
- Re: A proposal for a friendlier Emacs, Nicola Manca, 2020/09/17
- Re: A proposal for a friendlier Emacs, Gregory Heytings, 2020/09/17
- Re: A proposal for a friendlier Emacs, Alexander Adolf, 2020/09/21
- Re: A proposal for a friendlier Emacs, Richard Stallman, 2020/09/21
- Re: A proposal for a friendlier Emacs, Alexander Adolf, 2020/09/22
- RE: A proposal for a friendlier Emacs, Drew Adams, 2020/09/22
- Re: A proposal for a friendlier Emacs, Eli Zaretskii, 2020/09/23
- Re: A proposal for a friendlier Emacs, Eli Zaretskii, 2020/09/23
- Re: A proposal for a friendlier Emacs, Alexander Adolf, 2020/09/25
- Re: A proposal for a friendlier Emacs, Eli Zaretskii, 2020/09/25
- Re: A proposal for a friendlier Emacs,
Alexander Adolf <=
- Re: A proposal for a friendlier Emacs, Eli Zaretskii, 2020/09/25
- Re: A proposal for a friendlier Emacs, Richard Stallman, 2020/09/26
- Re: A proposal for a friendlier Emacs, Alexander Adolf, 2020/09/29
- Re: A proposal for a friendlier Emacs, Eli Zaretskii, 2020/09/29
- Re: A proposal for a friendlier Emacs, Alexander Adolf, 2020/09/30
- Re: A proposal for a friendlier Emacs, Richard Stallman, 2020/09/21
- Re: A proposal for a friendlier Emacs, Alexander Adolf, 2020/09/22
- Re: A proposal for a friendlier Emacs, Richard Stallman, 2020/09/22
- Re: A proposal for a friendlier Emacs, Alexander Adolf, 2020/09/25
- RE: A proposal for a friendlier Emacs, Drew Adams, 2020/09/25