Results of the App Installer Meeting

[Andreas Tille]

Hi,

thanks for the report and the fine work which the report is basing upon.
A view remarks:

On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 12:13:38PM +1000, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> We do not want the end users we target here to
> have to learn about packages: they already know what an application is,
> and this is what they actually care about ("I want Inkscape").

Cool.  I think it is not even precise enough.  Considering xapian is
involved it could rather be: "I want to draw vector graphics."

>     - Access apps metadata through xapian

Very cool!

>     - Access additional metadata through OCS (Open Collaboration
>       Services)
>     - Access screenshots, possibly through screenshots.debian.net (using
>       a per-distro proxy) or similar services

For Debian todo list:  A service as important for Debian and obviosely
for other should definitely moved under DSA control and should be
screenshots.debian.ORG !
 
> b) The Debian tagging system (debtags)
>    Tagging applications can help users find the applications they look
>    for. The meeting was too short to think about reaching a full
>    agreement on this, but there was interest in the debtags system. If
>    most distributions are interested in adopting this system, we will
>    integrate debtags into the overall architecture.

Similarly here: DebTags is currently at debtags.alioth.debian.org.  I
have noticed that debtags.debian.net "Works" :-) and there is no
debtags.debian.org.  IMHO this would increase the visibility of a
technique which is underestimated and to less known / used even inside
Debian.
 
What I'm missing in the summary and what was probably not discussed is
another user oriented service:  ddtp.debian.net.  Translating
descriptions of packages^Wapplications is IMHO quite important to do the
last final step to complete world domination.  As I know from some
discussion on debian-i18n list[1] DDTSS is severely broken and needs
definitely some love.  Some effort to put it under DSA control is
somehow stalled and the technique behind needs some more love by a
gifted and dedicated programmer.  Please do not forget:  Those users who
say "I want to draw vector graphics." will say it in their mother tongue
and we geeks to frequently forget that this is not necessarily English.
The availability of translated descriptions is IMHO crucial for the
success of the App-Intaller attempt.  The DDTP project is quite there
where we need to go but it needs more love.

Kind regards

       Andreas.

[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-i18n/2011/01/msg00044.html

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