[RULE] do we need a spreadsheet of the software?

[Eugene Wong]

Hi all.

I was thinking about how we could improve network installs via ftp & http. I 
thought that it might be valuable for us to try to create a spreadsheet of 
applications from http://www.rule-project.org/en/sw/  I am hoping that 
network install programs can download this spreadsheet, then use "cut" to 
parse it, then start downloading the appropriate packages. This would allow 
the program to always have access to the most up to date list, without 
having to update the program just for that list.

I have included software.txt as an example of what it might look like. It is 
a spreadsheet with the following fields & delimeters [correct terminology?]:
rpm location & name;source location & name;software category;recommended [if 
not then left blank];kilobytes of ram;kilobytes of diskspace;comments

Each record is 1 line, & each field is delimited by, ";", without quotes, of 
course. This should be compatible with scalc. We could add extra fields if 
you would like. The "recommended" field is not important. It's just a matter 
of simplifying things so that the install program can install what the most 
people recommend. Whenever there is 1 or more records for each software 
category, we could have a casual vote of what people think is the best. This 
is so trivial, that we shouldn't need to discuss it. After all, the install 
program can be designed to allow customized installs.

Comments? Questions?

If we decide to go ahead & do this, I would be willing to make the 1st file. 
Hopefully, we could be able to have a program or script create this 
automatically for us, eventually. Also, I would like the file to be placed 
in http://www.rule-project.org/en or http://www.rule-project.org/


Sincerely, and with thanks,
Eugene T.S. Wong

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software.txt
Description: Text document