[Rubygems-developers] Suggestion: RAA-like meta-data

[David A. Black]

Hi --

On Sun, 21 Mar 2004, Chad Fowler wrote:

> 
> On Mar 20, 2004, at 5:31 PM, Jamis Buck wrote:
> 
> > Chad Fowler wrote:
> >> Putting that aside, if we were to do something like this, I would 
> >> vote against hierarchical categories in favor of keywords.  I feel 
> >> like trying to force category standards on developers would be too 
> >> limiting.  Keywords (with suggested close matches) could help avoid 
> >> "losing" packages down unintuitive branches of the hierarchy.
> >
> > I'm in favor of the keywords approach.  Categories always feel clunky, 
> > since it's not always black-and-white as to where a package belongs. 
> > However, allowing developers to choose their own keywords could be 
> > detrimental, too.  That could be allowed, but there should be a set of 
> > "standard" keywords, too, so that users have some idea of what to look 
> > for.
> >
> 
> I'm thinking we could provide an alternative to standardizing keywords 
> by using case insensitivity mixed with the porter stemmer algorithm.  
> This would at least eliminate the difference between "Networking", 
> "networks", and "network".   I would personally like to avoid any kind 
> of standardized keywords and/or categories for gem developers.

I agree, especially as regards categories.  There's too much baggage
in things like having an XML category but sticking SGML stuff in "Text
Processing", and so on.  I've never liked hard-wired categories of
this kind (which is one reason I don't pine for a "CPAN for Ruby", but
that's another story :-)


David

-- 
David A. Black
dblack at wobblini.net