Comment 1 Quim Gil 2008-11-10 09:07:14 UTC

Let me put medium-Fremantle. If Marius or someone wants to take a shortcut and
do it earlier, fine.

Comment 2 Ryan Abel (reporter) 2008-11-10 16:15:00 UTC

(In reply to comment #1)
> Let me put medium-Fremantle. If Marius or someone wants to take a shortcut and
> do it earlier, fine.
> 

This isn't as important as bug #3845, but we _CANNOT_ wait until Fremantle to
ship the changes. Waiting for Fremantle on this one is a big "screw you" for
everybody involved in putting together and pushing the new list of categories,
and leaves us with the current broken situation for an UNACCEPTABLE amount of
time.

These category changes HAVE to be shipped within the next two SSU pushes. There
is no give here.

Comment 3 Marius Vollmer 2008-11-10 20:26:31 UTC

I have done some experiments in the 2.1.x branch:

    https://garage.maemo.org/svn/hildon-app-mgr/branches/2.1.x

In a nutshell, you can control the list of categories by installing
translations in the "hildon-application-manager-categories" textdomain.
The translations should not include the "All" and "Others" categories, those
are provided by the Application Manager.

Look into the catpo directory for an example.

More tomorrow...

2008-11-10  Marius Vollmer  <marius.vollmer@nokia.com>

    Restrict categories to those which are translated.  Take
    translations from "hildon-application-manager-categories" domain.

    * src/main.h (section_info): Removed symbolic_name field.  Added
    rank.  Updated all users to speficy name and rank.
    * src/main.cc (nicify_section_name): Look into
    "hildon-application-manager-categories" textdomain for category
    translations.  Return NULL when no translations are found.
    (compare_section_names): Take rank into account.
    * src/details.cc (spd_update_common_page): Use 'Other' when
    getting a NULL section name from nicify_section_name.

    * Makefile.am, configure.ac: Added catpo subdirectory.
    Fixes for subspace instabilities in the autotools.

Comment 4 Quim Gil 2008-11-11 09:53:21 UTC

The Fremantle development is branched already and I want to make sure that your
(good) suggestion ends up there. As said in Comment 1 this doesn't stop Marius
from shipping the changes already in Diablo, and as you see this is what he's
already doing.

Comment 5 Marius Vollmer 2008-11-11 12:14:00 UTC

(In reply to comment #4)
> [...] and as you see this is what he's
> already doing.

Nothing can stop me buhahahaha!  But I don't have the last word, formally.  But
I have good hopes.

Comment 6 Quim Gil 2009-04-14 13:26:42 UTC

I have Fremantle extras-devel installed and when clicking "Browse installable
applications" a 3x3 grid appears:

All - Accessories - Communication
Games - Multimedia - Office
Programming - Tools - Other

Marius, does this mean that this feature is already implemented?

PS: note that there is a diff compared to
http://wiki.maemo.org/Task:Package_categories#Maemo_Packaging_Policy and
http://wiki.maemo.org/Task:Package_categories#New_list_for_Diablo

What I don't know is whether more categories would appear if the corresponding
packages were available. I'm just a Fremantle tester.

Comment 7 Marius Vollmer 2009-04-14 13:45:20 UTC

(In reply to comment #6)
> I have Fremantle extras-devel installed and when clicking "Browse installable
> applications" a 3x3 grid appears:
> 
> All - Accessories - Communication
> Games - Multimedia - Office
> Programming - Tools - Other
> 
> Marius, does this mean that this feature is already implemented?

Yes, in Fremantle.

Comment 8 Quim Gil 2009-04-15 12:13:29 UTC

Alright, I got the list of categories from the current Fremantle specs:

"All"
“Desktop”
“Educational”
"Games"
“Graphics”
“Internet & Networking”
“Location & Navigation”
"Multimedia"
"Office"
"Other"
"Programming"
"Utilities"
“Sharing plug-ins”
“System”

The diff compared to the community list proposed is

- Science
+ Sharing plug-ins

I don't know the rationale but probably Science can be considered part of
Educational. Sounds reasonable?

About the sharing plug-ins I will file a bug internally.

Comment 9 Andrew Flegg 2009-04-15 12:25:58 UTC

(In reply to comment #8)
> 
> I don't know the rationale but probably Science can be considered part of
> Educational. Sounds reasonable?

Not really :-)

There's a difference between something which *can* be used in education, and
something which is education*al*. For example, spreadsheets can be used in
education - but they're still "Office" as their primary category.

Similarly, the examples of gnuplot & Octave are scientific tools.

> About the sharing plug-ins I will file a bug internally.

Yeah, no idea what that would be and there're bound to fit better either in a
different category (e.g. desktop/network/office/graphics/...) or in a
sub-category (not yet finalised).

Comment 10 Quim Gil 2009-04-15 14:24:53 UTC

> Not really :-)

I know, but it's a relatively decent simplification from a mainstream user
point of view.

Anyway, feel free filing new bugs against this list. Now it's the right time to
do it. I will file one about "sharing plug-ins" because I think there is a
better way to address that.

Comment 11 Quim Gil 2009-04-15 14:48:40 UTC

Just for the record:

Bug 111164 - “Sharing plug-ins” is a bogus category
Bug 111171 - "Science" category missing

Comment 12 Andre Klapper 2009-04-21 14:08:23 UTC

(In reply to comment #11)
> Bug 111171 - "Science" category missing

Science has been re-added now.

Comment 13 Quim Gil 2009-04-21 14:09:34 UTC

Argh, Andre got me while updating this bug:

(In reply to comment #11)
> Just for the record:
> Bug 111164 - “Sharing plug-ins” is a bogus category

UI designers and related managers think that it actually makes sense. The Maemo
architecture will push more and more the possibility to develop plugins to
existing applications and for many users this might be the first way to expand
the possibilities of their devices. This category wants to stress that.

Anyway, time will tell.

> Bug 111171 - "Science" category missing

Fixed and now this category has been added.

End result: all categories proposed by the Maemo community are there + this one
for Sharing that comes proposed by Nokia.

Comment 14 Andre Klapper 2009-04-21 14:18:26 UTC

(In reply to comment #13)
> Argh, Andre got me while updating this bug:

I'm sorry. ;-)
Realized afterwards that it wasn't me who forwarded the ticket.

Comment 15 Niels Breet 2009-04-21 14:36:27 UTC

Wouldn't sharing just go under desktop, multimedia, utilities or system? I
don't see there needs to be a special category for this?

And if there needs to be one, then surely a more general thing like 'Plug-ins'
would be better?

Comment 16 Andrew Flegg 2009-04-21 14:40:22 UTC

(In reply to comment #13)
> (In reply to comment #11)
> > Bug 111164 - “Sharing plug-ins” is a bogus category
> 
> UI designers and related managers think that it actually makes sense. The 
> Maemo architecture will push more and more the possibility to develop plugins 
> to existing applications and for many users this might be the first way to 
> expand the possibilities of their devices.

There are two better ways of doing that without introducing a new section:

  * Plugins in the appropriate section (i.e. a video sharing plugin would go
    in user/multimedia.

  * Per-application sub-categories.

> This category wants to stress that.

If a user wants to enrich their multimedia experience, they go to the "Sound &
Video" category. If they want to enrich their chat experience, they go to the
"Internet & Networking" category.

A "plug-in" category is expsosing internal application structure to a user that
may not understand it.

> End result: all categories proposed by the Maemo community are there + this 
> one for Sharing that comes proposed by Nokia.

Well, not so much "proposed" as "included without being proposed or discussed".
Where's the discussion on maemo-developers from these UI designers and
managers? It seems unfair to put you in the middle.

Comment 17 Ryan Abel (reporter) 2009-04-21 14:41:02 UTC

(In reply to comment #13)
> Argh, Andre got me while updating this bug:
> 
> (In reply to comment #11)
> > Just for the record:
> > Bug 111164 - “Sharing plug-ins” is a bogus category
> 
> UI designers and related managers think that it actually makes sense. The Maemo
> architecture will push more and more the possibility to develop plugins to
> existing applications and for many users this might be the first way to expand
> the possibilities of their devices. This category wants to stress that.
> 

OK, one question: What the hell is a "Sharing plug-in"?!

Aside from the fact that it's bad enough that a lot of experienced users don't
have a clue what a category means, but it's going to be a lot worse when
non-technical users see it. There's the simple point that for any possible
definition of "Sharing plug-ins" there's already a category which covers it.
I'd _assume_ that they would fall easily under Internet & Networking, but,
since I don't have a damn clue what a "Sharing plug-in" is. . . .

I think these UI designers and related managers have lost their perspective (a
state I'm quite familiar with myself, so I'm pretty good at recognizing it).
They're way too caught up in whatever silly Ovi-integrating vision they've come
up with to realize how silly this category is.

Comment 18 Andre Klapper 2009-04-21 15:02:40 UTC

(In reply to comment #17)
> OK, one question: What the hell is a "Sharing plug-in"?!

I basically agree with Andrew and Ryan here - it's not necessary for a user to
know that Sharing is codewise implemented by a plugin architecture, it should
be available as per functionality category.

And I most also say that in GNOME it's always been a problem for the German
team to translate the word "Sharing" to something useful ("Gemeinsam"/together
as an adjective, or the verb "teilen"/share that you cannot use as an
adjective/participate because "geteilt" would mean "split up").
But probably other languages are less stupid than German. :)

Comment 19 Marius Vollmer 2009-04-21 16:17:26 UTC

Some technical details, for those who are interested:

The normal translations for the Application manager are in packages called
"hildon-application-manager-l10n-foo".  They are somehow produced via some dark
magic from the UI specs.

The Application manager takes the list of valid categories categories from a
special gettext textdomain named "hildon-application-manager-categories".  If a
symbolic category has a translation in that domain to the current language, it
is considered valid.  Otherwise it is considered invalid and replaced with the
special "other" category.

The "hildon-application-manager-categories" textdomain files, in turn, are
contained in the "hildon-application-manager" package, and are produced while
building the h-a-m sources from *.po files contained in the h-a-m sources, in
the "catpo" directory.

The *.po files in the h-a-m sources are supposed to be periodically updated
from the "hildon-application-manager" textdomain.  There is a special target
"get" in the catpo/Makefile that will do this.

Thus, as long as nobody touches the files in the catpo directory and makes a
new release of the hildon-application-manager package, the list of valid
categories will not change.

Right now, the files in the catpo/ directory are the ones produced by the Maemo
community.

Comment 20 Andre Klapper 2009-04-28 15:35:31 UTC

Setting Target Milestone to Fremantle SDK beta.