[Catalog-sig] RE: [Pythonmac-SIG] PackageManager philosophy

Richard Jones richardjones at optushome.com.au
Sun Aug 3 10:12:47 EDT 2003


On Sun, 3 Aug 2003 08:45 am, Kevin Altis wrote:
> > From: Jack Jansen
> >
> > One problem that we would still need to solve on the user side (there's
> > lots of issues to solve on the scapegoat side) is that of finding
> > packages, especially in the potentially large experimental database.
> > The logical thing to do would be to use the PyPI model, but as of this
> > writing it just doesn't cut it. I just tried find a gui package for
> > MacOSX (pretending I didn't know any names). Whatever I typed in I
> > couldn't find anything. I eventually located pyobjc by typing "cocoa"
> > into the *description* field, but that's it.

FWIW, I found pyobjc by clicking "browse" then "Environment :: Mac OS X" ... I 
presume this means that the interface is not user-friendly enough? Perhaps it 
needs to be more prominent? Differently worded?


> This is likely a combination of issues. One is that PyPI has a variety of
> different descriptors, some of which overlap, and only one field, the
> Classifiers is actually structured data, and only two fields: name and
> version are actually required for a PyPI entry.

It's already been suggested that the classifiers field be required for 
submission to the index. I think it'd be a valuable change, if others 
agree...


> The search page let's you enter Summary, Description, and Keywords, though
> those should probably be reserved for an Advanced Search. The advanced
> search could also present a list of all the Classifiers or somehow present
> a more detailed specification from the trove categories.
>
>   http://www.python.org/pypi?:action=search_form
>
> So, there should be simple one field search that does a case-insensitive
> search of all the fields to get the most hits.

I agree with this. The search part of the interface was quick-n-dirty :)

In terms of the "present a list of all the Classifiers" ... have you tried the 
browsing interface? I recently fixed a bug so it no longer hides Mac OS X 
apps (and emailed the pythonmac-sig, but I don't know whether my message was 
allowed through moderation).


> I would probably put that 
> search on the main PyPI page and have both simple and advanced searches on
> the Search page.
>
> Even if PyPI doesn't follow the simpler model, the Package Manager can do
> its own simple search.
>
> The other side of the coin is whether the fields that make up the PyPI info
> need to be expanded or get more structure for things like the keywords. The
> trove categories are quite limited.

IMO, keywords are far from structured unless there's a strict set of them - 
and that's what the trove categories are for. I'm always willing to accept 
new classifiers for the places where it's lacking. A statement like "quite 
limited" leads me to believe you see large holes in its coverage - please, I 
need to know where those are or it'll never be fixed.


   Richard

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: signature
Url : http://mail.python.org/pipermail/pythonmac-sig/attachments/20030803/934787c4/attachment.bin


More information about the Pythonmac-SIG mailing list