[packagekit] More groups ?

[Richard Hughes]

2009/7/17 Mounir Lamouri <mounir.lamouri at gmail.com>:
> It's really difficult to choose a group for packages. In Gentoo, we
> have categories and there is an equivalent between these categories
> and Freedesktop menu specification. I've seen packagekit has also a
> link between groups and freedesktop menu specification: groups are
> somewhat freedesktop main categories.

Right, I'm keen to keep the group list to a manageable size (e.g. <30
entries) as big lists really hurt usability.

> I see two reasons against:
> - these new groups will need translations

Not a big problem, at least the GNOME translators have been fantastic,
and don't seem to mind at all when we add strings for new enums.

> - GUI will be a bit heavy (because it can lead to dozens of groups)

Yes, and usability suffers in my opinion.

> The second one is more complex. What I propose is as additional
> categories are related to main categories, we could specify a main
> category for every additional category. At this moment, it will be up
> to the UI to choose between the way of showing groups : only main,
> with a tree, only additional, etc.
> What do you think of this idea ?

You've just re-invented ::Category :-)

A category list is like a group list, but where the backend specifies
the translation, the icon name and also the parent. Using categories
you can build up a custom "tree" of group entries using the vendor
data. This is how the fedora backend uses "comps" to create a dynamic
group list.

Try doing:

[hughsie at hughsie-laptop src]$ pkcon get-categories | head
Category: Desktop Environments
 ID: desktops
 Name: Desktop Environments
 Summary: Desktop environments
 Icon: desktops
Category: GNOME Desktop Environment
 ID: @gnome-desktop
 Parent: desktops
 Name: GNOME Desktop Environment
 Summary: GNOME is a powerful graphical user interface which includes
a panel, desktop, system icons, and a graphical file manager.
...

And if you enable the
/apps/gnome-packagekit/application/category_groups GConf key, then the
gpk-application uses the category list, rather than the group list to
display the left hand group list.

Hope this helps,

Richard.