Re: [gentoo-dev] RFC: Application name in metadata.xml

[Michał Górny]

On Sun, 12 Feb 2012 16:14:42 -0500
Alexandre Rostovtsev <tetromino@g.o> wrote:

> On Sun, 2012-02-12 at 20:37 +0100, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> > >>>>> On Sun, 12 Feb 2012, Paweł Hajdan, wrote:
> >
> > > On 2/11/12 2:00 PM, Fabio Erculiani wrote:
> > >> Other distros associate a more user-friendly package name
> > >> (application name) to packages.
> > >> Say, they bind libreoffice-writer to "LibreOffice Writer" in
> > >> package metadata.
> >
> > [Replying to a random message in this thread.]
> >
> > Why do you think that writing the package name in mixed case and
> > with embedded white space would be more "user friendly"?
>
> because-removing-all-upper-case-spaces-and-punctuation-from-a-string
> makes it less readable to a non-programmer.
>
> > >> How about expanding metadata.xml (adding to its .dtd) to also
> > >> support this?
> >
> > I still don't see what this would buy us. So far we have a unique
> > identifier (namely ${CATEGORY}/${PN}) for our packages. Introducing
> > another name will water this down and cause confusion for users, in
> > the first place.
> >
> > So, can you point out what are the advantages of your proposal?
> > Are they large enough to outweigh the confusion arising?
>
> Users know a package's "natural name", not the occasionally cryptic
> ebuild name, and certainly not the category. If I want to install a
> game called "Neverwinter Nights", it may not be immediately apparent
> to me that I should emerge something called "games-rpg/nwn".
>
> Adding the natural name to metadata would allow users to more easily
> find the packages they need via packages.gentoo.org and tools like
> eix.

And make it less possible that users will actually report a bug
and suggest changing the package name to a less ambiguous one.

And AFAICS there's no 'nwn' in SRC_URI so it's just pointless to
abbreviate the name like that in our ebuild name.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny