Subject: Re: Adding 'See Also' information to pkgs
To: Anthony Mallet <anthony.mallet@useless-ficus.net>
From: David Brownlee <abs@netbsd.org>
List: tech-pkg
Date: 11/27/2001 21:46:17
On Tue, 27 Nov 2001, Anthony Mallet wrote:

> Frederick Bruckman wrote :
> | Are you talking about patching man pages?
>
> No. I was thinking of adding a new 'SEE_ALSO' variable to the packages
> makefiles. Basically the same principle as the 'COMMENT' variable.
>
> | how many "see also's" will you have for the window managers?
>
> Hum yes, that might be a bit huge if we reference all window managers
> present in pkgsrc. But there's no need to do this. For instance,
> WindowMaker could just reference 'AfterStep' as an alternative, because
> they are very roughly the same.
>
> But we could have 'gimp' referencing 'xfig' (complementary tasks),
> 'netscape' referencing 'opera' or 'konqueror' (alternatives), etc...
>
> | -- and from the user's point of view, he's going to see
> | "see also's" for man pages he doesn't even have!
>
> No, the idea is to let the user see other packages --- available in the
> pkgsrc tree --- that are alternatives to the package he is considering.
>
>
> | A more productive endeavor might be to fix the README.html generation to
> | make one web page per category, containing a link to every package that
> | has that category in it's "${CATEGORIES}". This would allow making
> | ad-hoc categories that satisfy particular interests.
>
> That's an interresting thought.
> Maybe my idea is just a matter of refining the 'category' field (that is:
> adding more descriptive categories).
> As of now, if I look in the 'graphics' subdir (I could have taken another
> example as well), I'll find a lot of packages that do not the same task
> at all: we have image manipulation programs, video viewers, plotters ...
>
> So, which one: A "SEE_ALSO variable" or "more categories" ?
> (or none of the above :) ?)

	How about 'subcategories' - it would still involve an additional
	step to generate the 'SEE_ALSO' lists.

	eg: mozilla, links, galeon, etc would all have
	SUBCATEGORIES = webbrowser

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