Re: [Gnumed-devel] Re: GNUmed in Section contents in Synaptic Package Manager

[Karsten Hilbert]

On Tue, Sep 02, 2008 at 04:19:03PM +0200, RKI Andreas wrote:

>> merkur:~/bin# apt-cache search med | wc -l
>> 1246
>> merkur:~/bin# apt-cache --names-only search med | wc -l
>> 114
>> erkur:~/bin# apt-cache --names-only search medi | wc -l
>> 56
>> merkur:~/bin# apt-cache search medic | wc -l
>> 27
>
> Well, but
>
>   ~$ apt-cache --names-only search ^med- | wc -l
>   14
>
> Seems better to me ...

Sure, but that assumes the user supplying the search term
knows that they "should" be searching for "med-". Why on
earth would they type the "-" ?  They have no clue that
there is something like tags or meta-packages or CDD let
alone that those are name "med-something" such that they can
be singled out by anchoring the term and appending "-". You
are kidding me, apparently.

The usual search would go like this:

        says: uh, medicine, let's see, uh
        types: "med" <Enter>
        says: ugh, 1246 package, I'll try again
        clicks: [x] "only consider package names, not descriptions"
        types: "medi" <Enter>
        says: hm, 114, but, hey, I'm lazy
        types: "medic" <Enter>
        says: whoa, just 1 ? now I'll be smart
        clicks: [ ] "only consider package names, not descriptions"
        types: "medic" <Enter>
        says: 27, now, that's better

And that's assuming a benevolent user.

Or would you be suggesting that Synaptics should add the "-"
to the user supplied search term ?

BTW, I'm not thinking the user actually types any of
"apt-cache search ..." or similar magic - that is what
synaptics better run behind the scenes.

Karsten
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