Re: 05/15: gnu: wesnoth: Rename package to the-battle-for-wesnoth.

[Daniel Jiang]

Hello,

Might be related to the subject (?) but would adding something like keywords/tags to package definitions help? On Emacs, a package definition like this can pop up:

ack is an available package.

     Status: Available from gnu -- Install
    Archive: gnu
    Version: 1.8
    Summary: interface to ack-like tools
   Homepage: https://github.com/leoliu/ack-el
   Keywords: tools processes convenience

Then searching packages via keywords can be done: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Package-Keywords.html

On Slackbuilds likewise (keywords somewhere below): https://slackbuilds.org/repository/14.2/system/guix/

This could be metadata to help find related stuff so there can be a games tag for the wesnoth package. Also dunno how related, but in Common Lisp nicknames can be defined for packages. I wrote some game programming libraries bindings before that uses a longer name for the definition but a two letter nickname to make it easier to use in practice.

Sincerely,

Daniel Jiang

On Wed, Mar 27, 2019 at 1:26 PM Pierre Neidhardt <address@hidden> wrote:

Tobias Geerinckx-Rice <address@hidden> writes:

> TL;DR: we're missing a field like ‘DISPLAY-NAME’, and all this is
> just hacking around the bush.

This could be a very nice idea!

> Using this logic, I counter that these very long names unfairly
> privilege 1337 hackers who can touch-type, and hurt the average
> Jo' poking at their chiclet keyboard with a chopstick ;-)
>
> Both arguments make about as much sense IMO (and caricature
> users).  I think a name like ‘the-battle-for-wesnoth’ helps
> *neither* user.

Users who cannot touch-type will typically perform simple queries, such as:

- battle wesnoth
- wesnoth battle
- battle
- wesnoth

(Using Emacs-Guix.el, Helm, or the next GTK interface.)

With "wesnoth" as a name, 3 out 4 queries won't hit a result.

I don't think that "typing" is the issue here.  At least, I wouldn't
sacrifice the _ability to search_ just to type short names.

Also an option is to alias package names.


> XLong names take longer to type on the command line, and noisy to
> read in code.

Noisy?  Why?  Short code filled with acronyms tends to be harder to read
then long explicit names.

Package names are mostly used as inputs.  In those longs package lists,
it's really nice to have explicit names and leave little room for ambiguity.

> Some hinder tab-completion. 

Why?

> In a GUI, they still look ugly: why no spaces?  Why lowercase?
> Why bother?  We don't have to choose between POLA from other
> command-line package managers and providing pretty metadata for
> higher-level UIs.
> We can do both.

Absolutely.

--
Pierre Neidhardt
https://ambrevar.xyz/