Request to register a "Main" desktop Category: Electronics

[Chitlesh GOORAH]

Hello there,

I'm posted this email 4 days ago, hoping it might attract some
attention upstream. Till now I haven't got any comment about this. Is
it worth for your guys (upstream) ?

Kind regards,
Chitlesh

On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 8:36 AM, Chitlesh GOORAH wrote:
> Hello there,
>
> This is a request to register a "Main" desktop Category: Electronics
> so that it becomes a standard defined by
> http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/apa.html
>
> Name: Electronics
> Description : Electronics design and simulation software, e.g. a
> circuit designer
> Notes: (none)
>
> For nearly 3 years, Fedora is also striving to provide an advanced
> electronic design and simulation platform for electronic hardware
> development under the name of "Fedora Electronic Lab". In short we
> provide opensource solutions for people to develop from IC chips to a
> final product e.g openmoko smartphone.
>
> http://chitlesh.fedorapeople.org/FEL
>
> I'm writing you this email on behalf of all upstream projects we are
> working with so that we all can deliver an unified and standard set of
> guidelines for other linux distributions, not only for Fedora.
>
> Problems we have WITHOUT this electronics main category:
> * The software we are providing do not fall under "Education"
> freedesktop MAIN category but fall into an advanced engineering
> category not yet defined by the freedesktop standard. At the same
> time, we don't want to mix software for Electronic Engineering and
> Mechanical Engineering, thus category "Engineering" isn't appropriate
> for a long term solution.
> * An unified and standard set of guidelines for all linux
> distributions and developers.
> * There are a lot of electronic "design flows". Each design flow
> contains various set of software. If all the software for electronic
> design falls into various categories, it does not give any linux
> distribution the proper credentials and value of their solutions.
> Opensource solutions are there but lost inside the bag.
> * No Compatibility across various desktop environments: KDE, gnome,
> XFCE, LXDE,...
>
> We are hoping that if this "Electronics" main category is approved,
> packagers of various distributions and developers will add
> Categories=Electronics;
> to their desktop files.
>
> In order not to drown other users into complexity, one of the gEDA
> developers came up with a small package called "electronics-menu"
> http://geda.seul.org/dist/electronics-menu-1.0.tar.gz
> which provides a "Electronics" menu as described by the RED arrow :
> http://chitlesh.fedorapeople.org/images/electronic-menu.png
>
> Please accept the icon provided
> http://geda.seul.org/dist/electronics-menu-1.0.tar.gz.
>
> On Fedora, we have tuned our GUI electronics software's desktop files
> so that they support this "Electronics" main category. I was told that
> even debian is opting for this type of menu category.
>
> As you can see on this page:
> http://chitlesh.fedorapeople.org/FEL/list.html
> we have quite a handful set of GUI for electronic design. That said,
> other electronic solutions are also mixed and confuses  a lot of users
> as they (newbies) can't distinguish the software set they need for
> their respective design flow (analog, digital, mixed signal,
> embedded). Hence, I've added submenu support to the
> http://geda.seul.org/dist/electronics-menu-1.0.tar.gz as described by
> the YELLOW arrow. However, we are still under discussion about the
> proper subcategory naming. Thus please leave these additional
> categories for a later discussion.
> http://chitlesh.fedorapeople.org/images/electronic-menu.png
>
> Kind regards,
> Chitlesh Goorah
>