Re: multiple categories

[Guido Draheim]

Peter Simons schrieb:
> Guido Draheim writes:
>
>  > (a) I do think that pretty soon the autoconf macro archive will be
>  >      filled with lots and lots of specific macros. It is not good to
>  >      have them presented on a single page and to expect people to
>  >      scroll the screen and to read _all_ names and check if they
>  >      apply to his problem.
>
> But putting macros into multiple categories will make the list of
> macros in each category _longer_, not shorter?

sure - but just _that_ category.

> I see your point and I agree that finding macros in the archive might
> be problematic. But putting macros into multiple categories IMHO won't
> help that. Using a more fine-grained category system would.
>
> Having learned from the Word Wide Web, we should drop the whole
> category business anyway and just provide a good search engine. :-)

sure. but we do not have that much categories, and probably do not
_want_ to have too many anyway since it is best to make the whole
ac-archive "browsable" - so that some bored people can have a look
of whats cute in some categories that have intested in.

>  >      For example, an obsoleted macro might only exist in the main
>  >      index page in the section `obsoleted` but an index page about
>  >      `cxx` could still list it but with an extra visual marker
>  >      saying `obsoleted` [...]
>
> Isn't prominently listing obsolete macros completely against the point
> of making them obsolete in the first place? They don't become obsolete
> for nothing. They do only when they have been replaced (in which case
> you should use the new one) or when they're known to not work (in
> which case you should not use it at all). 

not quite. Say that someone says "pick up macro xx from ac-archive's
c support", how does that turn out? Same thing for links into the
ac-archive from somewhere else - the macro should persist for some
time in its original place.

>  >      @category Installed Packages, obsoleted
>
> I'd like to postpone that point until we got the point of having
> multiple categories per macro at all, OK? If we decide to go for it,
> I'll come back to this.

well - let's make that verrry obvious: I have been hacking up the
sfnet gendoc script to do what I want:
(a) the frontpage macro list does only contain gnu macros
     - no user macros
     - no obsoleted macros
    that's almost acceptable in length.
(b) each category macro list contains
     - the macros from that category, first
     - any extra/experimental macros in that ought to be in this
           (including in-review or deferred macros?)
     - hints on obsoleted macros.
    each page is again of acceptable length.

in the example sfnet screen, look for "Installed Packages"
which does now:
(1) list all main macros
(2) extra macros from user directories
(3) obsoleted main macros
  see how (2) references "sf.net/user/macroname.html"
  while (3) still references "sf.net/category/macroname.html"
  i.e. the original file `just obsoleted` persists in the same
  place (!!) until it is "deleted".


-- cheers, guido