Feature Proposal: Use cases database

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le Jeu 11 septembre 2008 16:04, Richard Hughes a écrit :
>
> On Thu, 2008-09-11 at 15:38 +0200, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
>> Replace digital-photo forum with foo community and you'll get pretty
>> much the same results
>
> You're not meant to have one catalog file for all of that.

This was a much more focused example than your own "Cool GNOME stuff
list".

> You could
> just have a file called "Gallery integration.catalog"

I don't see how you can both maintain user can not discover
applications without catalogs, and affirm he can discover catalogs by
himself.

And even if you have a separate "Gallery integration.catalog" and you
manage to get the user to discover it that does not answer the
optionnal elements part. Are you going to split the gallery catalog
itself too?

What's the advantage of catalogs over packages if you end up with long
catalog lists and users needing to perform installation logic
manually?

> -- it's not
> comps
> where one file has to describe subsets.
>
>> > [PackageKit Catalog]
>> > InstallPackages=gnome-do
>>
>> This is so trivial it presents almost no interest at all. If you
>> want
>> to go mono-app please consider eclipse, openoffice or firefox and
>> their gazillon of plugins and extensions.
>
> get hacking on packagekit.catalog:
>
> [PackageKit Catalog]
> # Common packages
> InstallPackages=autoconf;automake;intltool;libtool;pkgconfig
> # Fedora
> InstallPackages(fedora)=glib2-devel;gvfs-devel;dbus-glib-devel;NetworkManager-glib-devel;PolicyKit-devel;
> # Pardus
> InstallPackages(pardus)=NetworkManager-devel;PolicyKit-devel;autoconf;automake;dbus-devel;dbus-glib-devel;docbook-to-man;gettext-devel;glib2-devel;gtk-doc;poldek-devel;python-devel;readline-devel;rpm-pythonprov;sqlite3-devel
> # Forsight
> InstallPackages(forsight)=gnome-development;dbus-development

I'm quite surprised your new example is developper oriented after your
claim of targetting non-technical users. But even with this use-case
it's not been unknown of development projects to provide optionnal
stuff (integration in X, Y or Z IDE) not every developper will want.

>> Well that's not the syntax on your own web page (misses ;) so we've
>> answered the question of your format being simple enough to be typed
>> by memory without validation
>
> You can use either delimiter, no package names have spaces in them. I
> guess it might even make sense to add ',' to the delimiter list too.

I rest my case. This is quickly evolving in perl-land.

>> What they do want is to click on a link, get the list of A, B and C,
>> and uncheck the apps targetting stuff they're not interested in.
>
> They won't know what most of the applications are.
> Also, applications
> !=
> packages, so you have to be a bit more wise than just knowing the
> application name.

You didn't read my message. I did address this point.

>> Wrong, anyone not sitting on a fiber to his home.
>
> I sit on a low speed broadband connection. I don't think I can even
> get
> fiber in my road, regardless, I don't spend much time installing new
> applications.
>
>> Think your openoffice user is going to appreciate downloading megs
>> of
>> optionnal openoffice stuff just in case?
>
> I don't think it matters if people install 45Mb rather than 33Mb --

???? You're off by quite a large level.

> downloading 45Mb takes me about 10 minutes, so I just let it install
> in the background or go and get a cup of tea.

That works because you're technical enough not to make mistakes. A
non-technical user will resent massively having to wait before knowing
he made a mistake or not.

> Bandwidth and disk space are cheap.

They're not.

>> Think your latex man is interested in installing megs of fonts for
>> languages he does not type? (how do you decide beforehand which
>> language a latex user will want to type)
>
> You don't, you patch the latex program to install it's own font when
> it's first used in a document (trivial).

Only works if either your user is working on someone else's document
that specifies this font, or if he knows the font beforehand. Normal
users need to have fonts installed before they think to use them.

>> Will the music junkie be interested in dvd playback and authoring
>> tools (just because the average teenager does both music and video)?
>
> I don't see the logic. Catalog files are fine grained -- it's okay to
> download 5 catalog files and execute then all at once --
> gpk-install-catalog is smart enough to combine them into one set of
> changes.

So basically you want to replace howtos that say type a b c by howtos
that say click a b c. That's not much of an improvement. At least you
can paste cli lines in a term in one go.

>> Presets are fine. Inflexible presets lead to resource waste and menu
>> clutter users do complain of.
>
> More people complain that Linux is "hard to use" than complain they
> have
> useless packages on their disk. I can say that, as I've asked a number
> real users (not developers).

If you asked it this way I'm not surprised you go this answer.
The user-visible effect is not "useless packages on their disk" but
"updates taking twice the time".

Cordialement,

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot